need daphnia culture

[Romi]

refering to tap water just put any kind of moss and some dead leafs with in couples of week u can see daphnia swiming around all over there..

i doubt that its possible
sounds like"Theory of Spontaneous Generation"( living organisms could arise suddenly and spontaneously from any kind of non-living matter)

yes, the daphnia will arise only if daphnia ephippia (eggs) are in the water or mud.

[Romi]

Ok shall wait for his return. Besides daphnia, I also need to ask him for info on FW fairy shrimps.

Freshwater fairy shrimp are a fascinating species alright, most species endangered and in need of attention from scholars like you. But for us lay people, as live food, Gammarus sp. (Scuds) are much better, and if u can also find those, it would be great.

[Romi]

Daphnia are long term a challenging live food to cultivate. No one i know has kept them long term. Each species has small quirks.

Chicken manure as food for them is excellent, other foods are expensive but not so reliable.

[Arjun Tandon]

Yes Sushant. No matter how much interesting Daphnia seem, even Romi had to give up on Daphnia after much of hardwork.
I heard that it is easy to make a bloom of daphnia from a starter but hard to sustain a good population over a period of time as the nutrients deplete.
So the culture is unstable and drastically blooms and crashes

I remember asking Romi about his cultures and one week he used to say it's going good while some other week he used to say that it is dwindling.

Rest is your choice.
I would say give it a try, as far as having an experience is concerned,
but don't expect much from it.

[juanico]

without a doubt feeding a wide variety of different food is the best thing to do, but it is also a question of balancing effort and yield.
culturing daphnia at our single-hobbyis-level seems to be just too much work and too unstable, compared to the amount you can breed.

another aspect is the nutritive value of daphnia. i have spoken to 2 fellow breeders and both told me that they have stopped feeding daphnia due to lack of a valuable content...don't know if it is true or not.

does anyone has a "data sheet" of daphnia composition?

[djmankotia]

I heard that it is easy to make a bloom of daphnia from a starter but hard to sustain a good population over a period of time as the nutrients deplete.
So the culture is unstable and drastically blooms and crashes

@Arjun,

From my observation and behavioural studies on planktonic crustaceans (freshwater critters like seed shrimps, copepods, rotifers etc), I have concluded that such exponential inflation in number and sudden population crashes is common, especially in Class Branchiopoda. I could not find many conclusive reports in scientific literature to support my claim, so my hypothesis is that such phenomena may not be observed in ponds and lakes where such creatures are usually studied. Possible reasons:
Firstly, conditions are stabilized in such ponds and lakes. Secondly, most scientific studies are usually performed in smaller manageable sized areas and results are extrapolated for entire habitats. Such rapid rise and fall in number is difficult to study over a widespread large habitat. Again, population fluctuations may be compensated where large they exist in large numbers. Also, laboratories and expert hobbyist who culture them use continuous culture method (as compared to batch culture) and specialized equipment where conditions are stable enough to maintain running cultures. In my opinion, this phenomena of 'bloom and crash' has more relevance in smaller populations like cultures maintained by usual hobbyist.

Experts please comment and add your observation and viewpoint.

[djmankotia]

Ok shall wait for his return. Besides daphnia, I also need to ask him for info on FW fairy shrimps.

Freshwater fairy shrimp are a fascinating species alright, most species endangered and in need of attention from scholars like you. But for us lay people, as live food, Gammarus sp. (Scuds) are much better, and if u can also find those, it would be great.

Romi-ji,

Still haven't achieved success in raising fairy shrimps, but have been searching scientific journals for more information. Some species are endangered right, but most can still be readily found in abundance in the Western countries. I checked some reports from India and I have personally gone and checked habitats where presence of these shrimps were reported in 70s and 80s and you won't believe it Romi, these shrimps are NOT there anymore!! Either the habitats have become polluted or have been totally destroyed by human activity (buildings, housing colonies,etc). At places where water was intact, people chose to use concrete on the bottom and sides of ponds and ended up ruining the whole habitat, not realizing that mud is the reservoir for all the aquatic critters. Fairy shrimps can still be found in many locations in South India, where aquatic habitats are still safe. I'm still eagerly looking for them every place/water body I visit in the North. So far, there is not a single location where I have found them. I don't have high hopes from urban locations, but there are chances i can find in rural/remote areas. The search is on! But the rate at which this has happened is alarming. I think we Indians are adding too much pollutants to the environment and ruining habitats very fast.

Some websites in US sell Gammarus starter cultures, and they have a good potential as live foods...very easy to raise for the usual hobbyist. Getting starter culture in India may be a problem, but we can look up literature for some related species that are native to India. But again, my purpose is not raising feed for my fish, I'm interested in fairy shrimps from ecological point of you, and also I want to raise them as pets. Of course, if I optimize the perfect hatching condition and succeed in raising a breeding colony, I'll have eggs to share with everyone. Wish me luck!

[Romi]

@DJmankotia buddy

Sad to know the shrimps are no longer in their confirmed habitats. I guess both us lay persons who love nature and those who study them professionally share this anguish, the sadness that nature is being hounded out of her own territory by rapacious and mindless human activity. Amol knows a place where fairy shrimp are available in NCR, would you like me to talk to him and ask him if he can help you get some?

Glad to see you are taking a scientific interest in daphnia. They might be challenging, as Arjun pointed out, but they sure keep you on your toes..

I have been looking for Gammarus for some time. I remember a looong time ago, when I was maybe 12 years, and we went to Anantnag in Kashmir (now called Islamaband by some) and were looking into the paved pathways of the ancient mineral spring re-named Chasme-shahi by the Mughals. This beautiful and crystal clear fountain of water sustained an amazingly dense population of gammarus. I put them in bottles, thinking they were shrimp, but was dissappointed to note that they were not swimming straight (curved body looks like it needs to stretch a bit!). If you could find them, we could culture them much more easily than any other crustacean, since they are happy to live on any dying vegetation, including green leafy vegetatbles.

@Arjun

Do you want to try keeping fairy shrimp too? You could keep them, they have a short life span. Then they lay eggs and die. So you could keep the eggs, and hatch them when u are back from college again ....

[Romi]

without a doubt feeding a wide variety of different food is the best thing to do, but it is also a question of balancing effort and yield.
culturing daphnia at our single-hobbyis-level seems to be just too much work and too unstable, compared to the amount you can breed.

another aspect is the nutritive value of daphnia. i have spoken to 2 fellow breeders and both told me that they have stopped feeding daphnia due to lack of a valuable content...don't know if it is true or not.

does anyone has a "data sheet" of daphnia composition?

Caudata.org is an excellent website that covers live food also. An extract from it says,

''Daphnia have a protein content of
around 50% dry weight and a fat content of 20-27% for adults (4-6% for
Daphnia http://www.caudata.org/daphnia/
4 of 22 3/18/2009 10:04 PM
juveniles). Some species have been reported to have a higher protein
content, and Moina are quite often found to be 70% protein. As with most
live foods, "they are what they eat", and so vitamin and other formulas are
available as food for filter feeders like Daphnia and Artemia which will give
them certain food values or an increase in a given fatty acid, for example
(H.U.F.A. or Highly Unsaturated Fatty Acids are often sold for this
purpose).''

The Krib is a website that has a few recipes that you can use to prepare daphnia food. It includes peas, paprika, and a very diverse nutrient range, so daphnia fed on that should be bursting with nourishment for fish i am sure.

This pdf borrows from The Krib and elsewhere and has useful links also

http://www.cems.uvm.edu/~dhemenwa/Water ... aphnia.pdf

[juanico]

thanks for the info

Caudata.org is an excellent website that covers live food also. An extract from it says,

''Daphnia have a protein content of
around 50% dry weight and a fat content of 20-27% for adults (4-6% for

the important thing is "dry weight"...since daphnia consist of approx 93% of water...the dry mass accounts only for 7%...and then the protein content only for 3.5% of the living daphnia....so the fish "eat" basically water.
i am not an expert on this and just share what i have been told, but to me it sounds plausible.

As with most live foods, "they are what they eat", and so vitamin and other formulas are

that's the other important note.
if you ask for a daphnia breeding method, most people will tell you to feed yeast...green water is deemed too work intensive.
what can you expect from yeast-fed daphnia?