AdamS Posted July 25 Share Posted July 25 I’m attempting to make green water without a starter. I’ve heard and read many different ways to do this, but never done it myself. I have 5x 1 gallon jars and thought I’d try each of them and see what works for me. All the water is aquarium water from my tanks. I’d love anyone’s thoughts or things to try to be more successful. I am trying to get green water to feed daphnia. I don’t have any daphnia yet, I figured I’d try to get green water first before going down that route. If anyone knows the best place to get some daphnia I’d also be interested in that. Jars - left to right 1- sponge grunge 2- banana 3- fertilizer 4- grass 5- lettuce The picture is from today, which is day 3 of this experiment. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMC Posted July 26 Share Posted July 26 Very interested in seeing how this experiment works out. Please keep us updated. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamS Posted July 26 Author Share Posted July 26 Day 4 - so far the lettuce looks the most promising. The banana and the fertilizer are getting dark and the sponge grunge isn’t doing much of anything. I forgot to add in I have covers on the jars but they are not tight to allow for some limited airflow. I shake them daily. They are outside currently but it looks like I will be getting a lot of rain soon so I may move them indoors with light next to them. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TOtrees Posted July 26 Share Posted July 26 I love the experiment, and I'm not here to rain on your parade. I will offer that I've been keeping daphnia for 3-4 years, and they do great without living green water. I have had outdoor bins of green water in the past, but they very much seem to be a bloom and gone sort of thing. Just to be clear, you'll need separate containers for your green water culture and daphnia, yes? If you put daphnia in green water, they'll clear it up pretty quick. Unless it's lots of green water and very little daphnia, in which case you get lots of baby daphnia, then they'll clear it up pretty quick. 🙂 So the "ideal" setup, I think, would be a banging green water culture, that you collect from and feed to the daphnia every day or so. Not sure if that's what you're aiming for. I can see that working, once they're all doing well... take a pitcher of water (with dapnia) out of the daphnia culture, strain out the daphnia and feed them to a tank, and discard the water. Replace the water with a pitcher from the green water culture, then replace the water in the green water culture with fresh (can't have chlorine or dechlor). Ad infinitum. For the green water, your best bet, once it's going, is straight water with no floaters or plants or daphnia or anything. Maybe some cleaner snails. For my daphnia cultures, I feed a mixture of 3:1:1 spirulina:pea flour:rice flour every 1-2 days. 20 gallon tall gets about 1/2 tsp of that mix per feeding. Change water every 2-4 weeks, around 25%. Vac the gunk on the bottom every 1-2 months. Light is only necessary for me to see. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamS Posted July 26 Author Share Posted July 26 Thanks for the response. Yes, I do plan to keep the daphnia and green water separate. I appreciate the insight, especially from someone who has done it before. The plan you laid out sounds like it would work. Where do you get the spiralina and flours? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TOtrees Posted July 27 Share Posted July 27 (edited) On 7/26/2024 at 3:02 PM, AdamS said: Where do you get the spiralina and flours? Up here in Canadia we have a cherished niche retailer called Bulk Barn that sells all manner of baking and snack and alt food stuffs in… you guessed it, bulk, i.e. choose your own portion and bag it. I get the pea and rice flour from them, and the spirulina from Amazon. Forgot to mention, it’s chickpea flour, not regular pea flour. And in case anyone is interested, my method of keeping daphnia is almost identical to Russ from Aquarimax Pets, he has a video about it on YouTube from a few years back. Edited July 29 by TOtrees 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamS Posted July 30 Author Share Posted July 30 Day 7- sponge grunge is taking the lead. The others are turning dark… maybe that is a good thing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMC Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 The sponge grunge is looking good! The fertilizer water color is consistently a synthetic off putting color. I made green water using vegetable broth (from boiled vegetable scraps) and sponge grunge. It stayed quite brown but my Rice Fish fry always grew well with it. I did run a slow bubble of water in my green water. Without some circulation it would quickly become quite smelly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamS Posted July 30 Author Share Posted July 30 Day 8 - the sponge grange continues to look good. But it also has algae growing on the inside of the glass Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HelplessNewbie Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 On 7/26/2024 at 2:31 PM, TOtrees said: Vac the gunk on the bottom every 1-2 months. How do you vacuum the gunk without accidentally sucking up the daphnia? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TOtrees Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 On 7/30/2024 at 3:44 PM, HelplessNewbie said: How do you vacuum the gunk without accidentally sucking up the daphnia? It’s a really quick and fast vac, around 0.5 gals from a 20 gallon tank. Not looking for perfection, or anything even close. Some daphnia do get sucked up. I transfer the removed water into a pitcher, let it settle for 30 mins or so, then pour off the water with daphnia, leaving the gunk in 1-2” of water at the bottom. I discard that (along with the small amount of daphnia there), and strain the daphnia from what I poured off, and feed it to a tank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HelplessNewbie Posted July 30 Share Posted July 30 On 7/30/2024 at 6:09 PM, TOtrees said: It’s a really quick and fast vac, around 0.5 gals from a 20 gallon tank. Not looking for perfection, or anything even close. Some daphnia do get sucked up. I transfer the removed water into a pitcher, let it settle for 30 mins or so, then pour off the water with daphnia, leaving the gunk in 1-2” of water at the bottom. I discard that (along with the small amount of daphnia there), and strain the daphnia from what I poured off, and feed it to a tank. Thank you for describing the process!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TOtrees Posted July 31 Share Posted July 31 On 7/30/2024 at 3:19 PM, AdamS said: Day 8 - the sponge grange continues to look good. But it also has algae growing on the inside of the glass Keep the pics coming 🙂 Some thoughts, looking at your latest pic: - sponge grunge: possible green water. You could transfer some of the water into a clear jar or glass and check if the water itself has any green. - banana, lettuce and grass: looks like bacterial bloom, might progress into green water as it clears. I wonder if removing the vegetal matter will help clear the bloom? - fert: can't tell what's going on due to the fert color. Maybe dilute it to 10% (10% of what's in the jar, with 90% water from a tank)? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamS Posted July 31 Author Share Posted July 31 Day 9 - sponge grunge looks good. It does have a slight green color even when looking from above instead of through the glass. @TOtrees I like your suggestions and will see about making changes for tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamS Posted August 1 Author Share Posted August 1 Day 9 - the sponge grunge looks really good. Also the fertilizer is calming down. I siphoned out the plant matter from the jars and added more aquarium water to each jar. My dog was nice enough to knock over the grass jar so that one is out. left to right: 1-sponge grunge 2-banana 3-fertilizer 4-lettuce the sponge grunge looks to be in the lead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lando Posted August 1 Share Posted August 1 Hi there, If your goal is to make green water to feed the daphnia, you will be running out of green water quickly. Also, culturing green water becomes a task in itself. You're better off buying nutritional brewer's yeast, you need very little, a $13 bag of it will last you over year if not 2-3 years. I use about 2 tbsp/3 times a day to feed all daphnia cultures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamS Posted August 2 Author Share Posted August 2 Day 10 - it looks like sponge grunge has won the contest. The water change really helped. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamS Posted August 5 Author Share Posted August 5 I took the sponge grunge (jar #1) and the fertilizer (jar #3) and split them into another two jars that are inside under a constantly on light with a bubbler on them. I want to compare how both of these fair for a week I filled all four of them back up with aged aquarium water. Jars outside Jars inside under a light with bubblers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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