live daphnia colony in a tank? Good? Bad?

[KittenFishMom]

I have been using a flashlight and catching a large amount of daphnia on the lake shore. I have been putting them in my tanks of mostly guppies in hopes of establishing colonies to help clean the tank and feed the fish while I take care of my mom who is on hospice. I never know when I can get to the cottage, and often can only stay about an hour.

Someone will ask, so these are my tanks, all 10 gallon, one has 3 goldfish and guppies. 2 just have guppies. one has guppies and 2 corys, and the last tank has neon tetras and guppies and a flag fish with a white spot on it's side that I noticed tonight. I will try to get a photo of the flag fish, but I don't think I will be able to treat it with my current situation.

This situation has been evolving since the end of February when my Mom platelets drop to a life threatening level and my well got cloudy and messed up my cycled tanks.  I moved guppies around trying to balance the bio loads and added lots of plants to deal with the nitrogen. The plants did wonders for the tank water and gave the guppy fry a great place to hide. This resulted in a guppy population explosion. The only fish store I found that would except guppy donations would only take a max of 20 a week.  Things have been stressful and a bit crazy, as you can imagine.

I got weeping willow branches to root in all the tanks, except the one that had salt for a betta. The betta died a while ago, so I am replacing the salted water with bottled spring water when I can do a water change.

If life was different, I wouldn't be dumping large amounts of freshly caught wild daphnia in my tanks, but such is life.  Do you wonderful supportive fish folks think the daphnia is a good live food for the fish?  The fish seem to love them and go nuts gobbling them when I add them to the tanks. I am also feeding the tanks lightly with a mix of high quality foods. I can't hatch brine shrimp because I don't know when I can get back to the cottage after I set them up to hatch.

I look forward to hearing from you.

[Flumpweesel]

It's a great live food and I'm sure you can deal with flying side effects easily enough when you need to.

A big food supply will encourage breeding though so it won't help with the population explosion.

[TheChosenOne]

Daphnia are a great food source for fish. If you mean you want to start a colony to feed to your fish that would work in an aquarium for sure.  But daphnia colonies crash overtime and can require some attention to keep them going long term.   In order to keep things easy for yourself and not add much work setting up an outdoor tub or tank that can constantly receive sunlight and thus generate green water to feed the daphnia would make things easier. Outdoor colonies seem to last longer some people are even able to keep them alive through the winter.   If you meant you were hoping to get a colony started in your tanks with the fish that will most certainly fail as the fish will constantly hunt them down.   Best of luck. 

[KittenFishMom]

I want to give the fish a high quality live food that will last for several days with out fouling the water while I am away, caring for my Mom.  I can restock from the lake frequently, on any calm night. the daphnia come up to the flashlight and are easy to catch.

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

I do feed daphnia semi regularly. I havent had much success getting them to last long in with fish mouths. Even if there are heavy plants my fish tend to eat them all immediately in my tanks. 

An auto feeder is about the best way I have found to level out the feeding since it will feed a tank on the schedule I set and last for up to a month before needing a refill. I can then just supplement with live foods like daphnia when i am around. 

The other option ive used is a banquet block / vacation block etc. a time release food that fish work on for up to 3 days  I havent notice it fouling the water in my tanks when i have used one. I also am of then my opinion most fish, that are adult sizes, can happliy go much longer than we think without food.