Can I use my koi pond for live food for my aquarium?

[FScalfano]

I was reading about raising daphnia for live fish food and it raised a couple of questions in my mind. First, I have a 75 gal tank plumbed in parallel with my community 200 gal tank. The 75 has no fish just some dwarf hair grass (that I rescued from the tender attentions of my severums-a subject of a prior post) and some mangroves that I am growing. Could I use that tank to raise daphnia, considering that the temperature is the same as my community tank (78 F) and that they would probably spread into that tank even without my intervention?

Second, as I have a koi pond in my yard, which has been operating for years, and is currently full of green algae, could I just scoop up water or sieve it to collect daphnia and insect larvae to feed my tank fish? Is this safe?

[AllFishNoBrakes]

On 3/13/2024 at 3:52 PM, FScalfano said:

could I just scoop up water or sieve it to collect daphnia and insect larvae to feed my tank fish? Is this safe?

I don’t see why it wouldn’t be. Cory has talked about putting out buckets of water in the summer for mosquitos to lay eggs in to harvest mosquito larvae to feed to his tanks. Feels very much the same to me. 
 

Personally, I would sieve the water to try to only get the daphnia and other larvae and try to not being the algae along with it to the tank.