Best place to get microfauna that isn’t a pond?

[Claybo]

I want to add a lot of copepods and rotifers and daphnia to my fishless experiment tank but I’ve already had a bad experience with pond sourced isopods and a lot of hydras being introduced with them subsequently killing everything. Any good places to buy captive cultured ones or any forum member suggestions would be nice, thanks.

[Guppysnail]

Carolina biologic sells lab cultures of tons of microfauna. You can also Google each thing you want clean cultures of. 

[Claybo]

Carolina bio is a local company of mine and I know they source most of their stuff from outdoors and I’ve gotten a lot of hydra from them when I ordered isopods. I was just looking for some like captive cultivated creatures for an eventual ecosystem where I don’t want a lot of nasties from outdoors. I ended up ordering from aquatic arts because I know they breed the stuff there and fishtory suggests them. 

[RennjiDK]

I would be extremely interested in this as well. There is not enough FW discussions regarding micro bio and fauna, imo.

[Claybo]

I agree, it’s so hard to find any amount of deeper info on the subject it feels like no matter where I go. The secret history living in your aquarium (now fishtory) is however a good source but he still doesn’t have all the info and it’s also a bit dispersed through his vids 

[Guppysnail]

On 5/28/2023 at 11:56 PM, RennjiDK said:

I would be extremely interested in this as well. There is not enough FW discussions regarding micro bio and fauna, imo.

I agree. There is a lot of negative discussions and even more on how to kill off so many natural critters that find their way into our tanks but not much on natural microfauna. 
I started keeping fish when I was 7. Mom got me a tank and air pump at a yard sale. I knew nothing and at that time home computers were still a thing of science fiction. 
I caught everything at the creek beside the house. Because of that I do not have the same aversion to the types of fauna that others do. 
I start tanks adding in ostracods, amphipods and copepods. I feed 2 sizes of live baby brine shrimp so get hydra from there. I have 3 types a small green, medium white and large that has a slight pink tint. A few years ago I bought some wild collected plants and obtained quite a few flat worms and a few types of really cool planaria. 
I have never had issues with hydra. My fish are very prolific. I did notice recently that my Apistogramma moms were taking their babies to eat where my hydra had moved to the gravel. I’m guessing because that is where the microfauna were most active. 
Not fearing the natural critters I learned to control the populations of things by feeding and maintenance. 
I do not have issues with heavy planaria populations and I have only ever found them to be s nuisance in egg scattering tanks. Most of my fish eat them. 
I culture a lot of micro fauna myself. Quite a bit cyst the eggs and then they appear heavily in my shrimp and snail only tanks coming in on food. I harvest from there to seed my other tanks. 
Algae for me is critical to maintaining a healthy microfauna population. It is home and provides food for the microfauna. 
I agree more positive discussion on this topic is definitely needed in the hobby. 

@Claybo  I got a really great clean ostracod population on eBay. It came in small bottles with black lids. I cultured it from that to get a larger numbers to increase the population density in my tanks. 

[Biotope Biologist]

Carolina cultures have gotten a bit messy as of late. Lots of die off and mixed species cultures. I did get my population from them first and while the isopods didn’t survive I do still have a good healthy population.

 

I have 4 White cloud fry now and I never feed them save a few daphnia every other week and when I check on them their bellies are always full.

 

Hydra have never been an issue for me either. Right now their population is going through a dormancy period. Wherever there are things to eat hydra never seem far behind.

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Charles Clapsaddle with Goliad Farms does a great job with the scuds he sends out. I got some neocaridina but no hydra - he sent it with some hornwort and it also had some daphnia. I did get a culture of daphnia from Aquabid but can’t say that went great but I think that was me more than the actual culture. 

[Expectorating_Aubergine]

Stock tanks for cows and such have a startling amount of biodiversity.