# Other Aquarium Forums > Fish Care, Nutrition and Water Management >  How to keep daphnia alive?

## iaintay

As title stated. I do not want to keep going to and fro to the LFS as its quite a distance.

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## lucasjiang

Keeping daphnias are not that hard. Basically, there are only two problematic parts to keeping it, firstly, food, secondly, keeping the water clean.

For the first part, they survive on green water. Green water is basically water with many floating photosynthetic algae (eg euglenia) inside. to culture daphnia, you will need large quantities of this. To get greenwater, you can put a few spoonfuls of fertiliser in a tub of water, which will result in green water very quickly.

Second part, keeping the water clean. Take note that after you buy the starter culture of daphnia, A LOT will usually die in the first two days. This will make the water very dirty, and poisonous substances eg ammonium, nitrates, will rise sharply, which will result in even more daphnia dying, and the cycle repeats itself. Hence, you muck keep the water clean through water changes.

If these two can be achieved (which is quite tedious), then you can culture daphnia  :Very Happy:

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## iaintay

I will buy live daphnia from a LFS, counted as a daphnia starter culture??. What fertiliser? The tablet for my planted tank counted as a fertiliser for food??

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## lucasjiang

Yes, that is what i meant by starter culture. You can use tablet for planted tank, the main purpose is to created an algae bloom. Otherwise, if you keep rabbits or hamsters, you can use the shit.

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## Jungle-mania

From my own personal experience and a painful one at that. Please take note of a few thing:
1. get an air pump.
2. clear the bottom of dead daphnia daily.
3. it is better to cultivate them over time and feed those, most that you get from the LFS are biohazard bombs waiting to blow. Almost all of them are cultivated in ponds near abattoirs where the animals' blood are fed into these ponds.

I lost alot of good and rare fishes to them.

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## iaintay

So, i have to set aside a tub of green water and constant dropping it into the daphnia culture?

Jungle-Mania, i was recommended the LFS from a reputable betta breeder, so i guess its pretty safe.

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## Jungle-mania

Its a gamble, I cannot comment on that. I think you have to grow them in the green water and not the other way around, the amount produced is drastically reduced compared to those in blood ponds.

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## iaintay

Damn... I am far too lazy to start a BBS culture. Failed many times. Microworms are way too smelly.

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## lucasjiang

personally, i prefer to separate the greenwater and the daphnia. If you put them together, the daphnia will consume all the greenwater in a few weeks, and once there is no greenwater, your daphnia culture will crash very quickly.

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## Shaihulud

I have tried culturing them, and I noticed that without direct sunlight the amount produced is pitful, but with sunlight it can actually be very productive, although I suppose a plant light would serve. It is hard to prevent mosquitoes from breeding in it however. I had to individually siphon out the larvae when I spot them, although the fish appreciates those!

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## iaintay

so lucas, can type to me a instruction sheet??  :Mad:  if its not too much to ask.

Shaihulud, if theres constant water flow, i suppose no mosquito would be daring enough?

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## Shaihulud

I left them on the balcony, the sun you see, that might have attracted more mosquito. It was more of an experiment actually, I live next to a lfs that sells them regularly. I also tried to culture tubifex worms, too slow to feed growing betta fries. propably someone who have thought it through would suceed better at culturing live food.

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## ahpek_lion

put inside green water and they will thrive

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## iaintay

Hmm. So it is better to buy regularly from a LFS than cultivate it? 

I manage to make my tubiflex live for 2weeks and going!!

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## simonchan

Thanks for the advice! I've transferred the surviving daphnia from a batch bought 2 days ago, attracting them with an LED torchlight, siphoning them through a fine mesh and transferring them to a tub of clean dechlorinated water. Added a bubble filter and green water from a failed hydroponic experiment I had left by the window. Hopefully these make it!

In future, I will strain the daphnia and transfer to a clean tank, I suspect the water they are sold in, in our LFS, contain some bad stuff hence the rapid die-off. Those I had put into my fry tank and were slightly too big for the fry, are still swimming around.

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## tetrakid

LOL... That last post was posted many years ago... In 2010.

Daphnia aka boons is superb for fish. But since I discovered the goodness of fruit flies, I do not think much about boons anymore. My fruit flies are the world's biggest 'boons'. My platys and goldfish love them!  :Smile:

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## simonchan

haha yes i'm aware, but it is still valuable research for boon keeping. I feed my adult goldfish meal worms, the 2-week old fry are too small for fruit flies? working up toward microworms next. Planted some potatoes in my garden, waiting for the big stink next week to see if i get a diet step-up for the fry. but fruit flies (those pesky little critters)... hmmm.. good idea! i suppose you trap some hovering over fruits and culture them in a netted tank? how do you feed them to the fishes - a quick "water-boarding" and pour them into the aquarium?

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## tetrakid

> haha yes i'm aware, but it is still valuable research for boon keeping. I feed my adult goldfish meal worms, the 2-week old fry are too small for fruit flies? working up toward microworms next. Planted some potatoes in my garden, waiting for the big stink next week to see if i get a diet step-up for the fry. but fruit flies (those pesky little critters)... hmmm.. good idea! i suppose you trap some hovering over fruits and culture them in a netted tank? how do you feed them to the fishes - a quick "water-boarding" and pour them into the aquarium?


I don't culture fruit flies. I trap them in a container with juicy orange peel as bait. I tried culturing flightless fruit flies once but found it troublesome and the culture medium is costly over the long term.

Now I trap them often and they are a great nourishing diet for my fishes. After attracting the fruit flies in the container, I trap them with a big cellophane bag. Once all the fruit flies are trapped in the cellophane bag, I have to KO them ie. knock them out by flicking my fingers against the bag after shaking them into a corner. I can also immobilise them in the microwave oven for 10 seconds. This is necessary or they will all fly away. After they are KOed, I pour them into the fish tank for my fish.

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## simonchan

> I don't culture fruit flies. I trap them in a container with juicy orange peel as bait. I tried culturing flightless fruit flies once but found it troublesome and the culture medium is costly over the long term.
> 
> Now I trap them often and they are a great nourishing diet for my fishes. After attracting the fruit flies in the container, I trap them with a big cellophane bag. Once all the fruit flies are trapped in the cellophane bag, I have to KO them ie. knock them out by flicking my fingers against the bag after shaking them into a corner. I can also immobilise them in the microwave oven for 10 seconds. This is necessary or they will all fly away. After they are KOed, I pour them into the fish tank for my fish.


 :Well done:  great idea! Thanks for sharing!

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## tetrakid

I place my fruit fly trap outside at a convenient spot. If it's not too windy, I normally get a good bagful of fruit flies. I get more if I set up two traps.

Place the trap in the evening overnight and harvest the flies in the late morning the next day. This way more flies would have congregated in the trap. For full bagfuls, the fastest way to KO them is in the microwave oven. Be careful not to cook the flies but just long enough to immobilise them. Fruit flies are the only live food I feed my fish, in addition to pellets/granules and rolled oats. Somehow, fish just love rolled oats too.

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## Ernis

Daphnia can be cultivated only in raceway ponds under care. Forget using electritcity! Sun is at this moment for free. Place 1kg/10m3 bag of horse manure(bird manure has lots of PO4, you will end up algea bloom in your fish tank), cover whole tank from birds with net and *WIND.* Yes its very strange that wind can involve in this process, but its the only way to success. Horse manure will start root, and increasing rotifiers and infusoria culture naturally. Green water/algea mostly protosans will acure too. Its food chain from smallest to biggest. Daphnia should be food chain end. Temperature will be main ingreadient in this recipe for fast, easy food. And sure its free. Contaminants like hydra and bloodworms, cyclops and stuff can be there too, so its your choice to risk.

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## simonchan

My daphnia culture is still going strong after 5 days (LFS said they won't last a day and in the past they didn't without filtration). Looks like the bubble filter works with a few granules of yeast (baking kind) every couple of days, whenever i run out of green water, plus daily detritus that i siphon from the fry tank which also saves me disposing of it. I still have a steady daphnia supply for my fry.

I suck them up through a turkey baster, strain them through a soup bag (the kind used to hold herbs/ garnishing in soups and stocks), and the water goes back into their tank.

Findings:

Batch 1: No air stone (died a horrible death)
Batch 2: Need a filter (50-60% loss by morning)
Batch 3: Still going after 5 days. Feed green water, yeast (not too much apparently), and detritus from fish tanks (versus animal waste - the thought of using my dog's poo crossed my mind but only so briefly LOL). So far the food source is "clean"

Also found this very useful article: http://www.caudata.org/daphnia/#cult1

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