bloat

[electric eel]

i was wondering if any of you guys have had any issues with bloat after feeding live daphnia.uwe romer cautioned me about overfeeding apistos when i asked him for some tips at the aca in atlanta.i've tried to watch how much i feed them but evidently i fed my cac's too many daphnia and lost one of the females in my quad(one of the 2 females i know had spawned for sure)she wasn't egg bound cause it happened too fast.i tend to feed my other fish prob. a little on the heavy side(not more then they will eat) and have always had good results.i usually fast them one day a week.i've tried to feed the apistos a little sparingly though(for me anyway)

 

[dw1305]

Daphnia

Hi,
I'm not sure it is the Daphnia, I have Daphnia in my water butts, and sometimes towards the end of the summer when we've had a warm day and a cold night, the water I draw from the bottom of the butt is about a third Daphnia, Cyclops and Ostracods. I change 10% of my water every day, so sometimes it can be 3 or 4 days of continual live food buffet.

I just tip it all into the tank, the only negative effect seems to be the fish get quite picky and spit out the Daphnia carapace once they've had the contents, they also chase the Cyclops round, even when there swimming through blizzard of Daphnia to get them. They eat the Ostracods (seed shrimps), but only after they've eaten everything else.

personally, I'd probably go for a more frequent water change.

Cheers Darrel

 

[electric eel]

i guess that answers that question darrell.i wasn't sure thats why i posted.i suspect you are right on the water becausewith the fry in the tank i've been doing bbs a couple times a day prob. caused the water quality to get bad(i didn't know it would cause bloat she looked eggbound).where did you get the eggs for the cyclops or the adults to keep a culture going?i have not seen them here in the u.s.i have to make do with frozen variety.i would love to culture some.

 

[dw1305]

Hi Electric Eel,
I didn't really culture the Daphnia or Cyclops, they just arrived on their own.
I use to occasionally take water from our garden pond, and store it in the water butts for plant watering etc. and I expect that is where they came from.

If you net any reasonably clean semi-permanent water body, with an an aquarium net or pull out a handful of water weed you get loads of swimming mayflies, copepods, ostracods, chironomids etc. I'm not sure about the US, but I expect you could get Cyclops in this way. I never get many Cyclops compared to Daphnia, about 2% in the summer (when I have loads of Daphnia) and about 20% in the winter (when I don't have many)

I was told if you have a lower pH you get more Cyclops, more alkaline more Daphnia, but I eventually found I had a fairly consistent supply with out culturing them and gave up.

When I cultured them it was in shallow trays, (no aeration or heating) with sand on the tray bottom and fed them with bread yeast, 50% water change every week with old tank water. The did reasonably, but I never ended up with loads of them.

cheers Darrel

 

[viejo]

I'm working on a K.I.S.S. method for culturing moina with pretty good results (so far). Don't use bbs anymore, the fry grow faster with moina. The only real problem with the culture is keeping the microalgae going consistantly.

 

[dw1305]

KISS method for Moina - Hellweg "culturing live food....!

Keep it simple stupid?

this one?
<http://www.aka.org/aka/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=2659>
or
<http://www.well.com/user/debunix/fish/fishIndex.html>

Just found you at the AKA pages so I assume it's that one.
I'd be interested in how you get on.

Has anyone got a copy of Mike Hellweg's book?

"Culturing Live Foods: A Step-By-Step Guide to Producing Food for Your Home Aquarium"

It's just become available via Amazon UK, I'm very tempted to buy it.

cheers Darrel

 

[viejo]

Yes, the AKA post was mine back when I was having trouble getting a good start of moina.
I have the Hellweg book & highly recommend it! I gave Mike a re-start of my moina when he was in town to speak @ our society meeting (his culture had crashed) & last time that I checked he said it was still going strong.

 

[electric eel]

i know its possible to collect daphnia,fairy shrimp and in the summer i collect a variety of blood worms,black and a few white mosquito larvae and something that looks a bit like a tiny tadpole(don't know what they are but the fish always go for these first) i have never heard of anyone collecting cyclops though.we're getting a bit of topic so i hope noone minds.i keep my daphnia in a tank with apple snails(read a bout this in an old t.f.h. magazine)if you feed the snails heavily (i feed them primarily celery but they eat most any vegtable matter)the waste and bacteria produced is sufficient to feed the daphnia.i suplement this with stage one baby food sweetpotatoes heavily diluted in tank water.i've also blended water and freeze dried cyclopeeze in the blender.they will eat this also.you can tell because they get very red.you have to take care when feeding this stuff.it doesnt take alot.its a good way to get the cyclopeeze into fish that won't eat it otherwise(i find that some fish will eat the freeze dried but an awful lot won't)