HOW TO BREED DAPHNIA AT HOME
Every aquarist knows that daphnia (Daphnia pulex) is an excellent food for almost all fish species. Despite the fact that this fish food can be found in almost any pet store, it can easily be reproduced at home.
Immediately note that for reproduction will need live daphnia, culture of which can be purchased at a pet store, on the market or caught with a net in the pond. The latter option is less preferable, because together with daphnia you can catch and parasites, which may subsequently get into the aquarium and provoke various diseases among the aquarium inhabitants.
You can breed Daphnia in any vessel (jars, barrels, etc.). For example, we will use a plastic tank of 100 liters. The tank is filled with water at a temperature of 18-21° C. It should be noted that at a higher water temperature the multiplication process is much slower. In this regard, you will also need to find a cool place to install the tank. Of course in the tank to control the reproduction of daphnia is difficult, and to understand the whole process of breeding daphnia in the home, the first time it will be appropriate to try to do it in an unnecessary aquarium to see with their own eyes how the process occurs and avoid disappointing mistakes in the future.
Daphnia food
The most suitable food for daphnia are:
- Various specialized feeds designed for freshwater shrimp;
- Dried and ground spirulina algae powder;
- Wheat flour and baker's yeast;
- the so-called Douga mix - the most effective feed. This mixture consists of 3 parts wheat flour, 1 part soybean meal, grinded into powder 1 part peas, 2 parts spirulina and 1 part paprika.
Feeding Process
Feeding Daphnia can be guided by the quality of water (its transparency), or by the number of colonies of daphnia in the tank.
In the first case, add a small amount of feed to the water and stir the water slightly, resulting in cloudy water. Remember the portion of feed that you dissolved in the water. The next day the water should be clear. If it is still cloudy, too much food was given, and vice versa, crystal clear water indicates that all the food was eaten and a little more should be given next time.
In the second case, you will need to determine the average number of daphnia in a certain volume of water. To do this, it is very convenient to use an ordinary medical syringe, for example, for 20 ml. It is necessary to pull out the piston from the syringe and tie the flask to the wand. You get something like a scoop, which you need to scoop daphnia from different layers of water, each time counting their number, and then calculate the average value. Then it is necessary to give out food guided by this data. For example, if the average number of daphnia is 20 pieces per 20 ml of water, then 100 liters of container will require two teaspoons of food. In doing so, monitor the water quality and if it becomes excessively turbid, you need to reduce the portion of feed.
Daphnia aquarium prevention
In order to grow the population of Daphnia is necessary once every 3 days to carry out preventive maintenance replacing ¼ of the water in the tank with fresh water at the same temperature. At the same time it is necessary to clean the bottom, removing all debris with a siphon.
Significantly facilitate the cleaning of the container from the accumulated organics can conventional aquarium snails, which are well cope with this task and in addition are not harmful to the daphnia.
In a tank with daphnia must be aeration, through which the water is not only quickly saturated with oxygen, but also provides a more even distribution of food in all layers of water.
With all of the above conditions, after 2-3 weeks the population of daphnia will increase significantly.
When to fish for daphnia
Catch daphnia to feed fish can be when their numbers in the tank will reach at least 10 pieces per 20 ml of water. It is necessary to catch only large specimens, and small Daphnia need to leave, so they grew up. Sort Daphnia conveniently with a net having a cell size equal to the largest Daphnia specimens.
