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Daphnia culture dying off fast


siftyzod

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Hi there

i am wondering if anyone can help me as this is urgent

i am about 2 days away from my axolotl eggs hatching and i brought a healthy daphnia culture.

i made up a bucket of water added yeast and let it sit while i waited for it to arrive.

it arrived and i added the culture to the bucket then took some water out of the bucket and made a few smaller cultures

problem is the water smells pretty bad is this good or bad?

the daphnia are dying off pretty fast will they recover or did i ruin this lot?

i am new to this and have no idea what i am doing and if this dies my 400 axolotls die too.

so please any help for a quick fix would be really good right now my partner has said she is not allowing me to spend anymore money on my axies so i need to get this right first time

advice please

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ok all the answer are helpful but it cant find anywhere that says to much or to little yeast

we have decided to flush all the eggs cause they are going to die anyway

but i need to figure out how daphnia is kept...

there must be an easy way to do it they live in the wild with no air pumps or yeast or anyone checking their ph levels etc..

so what is to much yeast im pretty confused by all this

as i said i dont know "NOTHING" about any of this

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Feed them on decomposing greens. Add a little amount of lawn clippings like Ryan did. I threw in a few leaves of old lettuce and my culture grows just fiine.

can can u put ur culture straight in with the lawn clippings or do u have to wait??

as i said i know nothing about doing this at all

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I would set them up in a big container (last time I used one of those blue shell paddling pools from the warehouse) use 100% rainwater or old water change water. As with fish just start off feeding small amounts at a time until you get the hang of it, they will die quickly in polluted water but wont die of starvation as fast.

Have you considered hatching brineshrimp and using microworms for your eggs? They only take a day to hatch and they are allot more reliable than a daphnia culture.

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I would set them up in a big container (last time I used one of those blue shell paddling pools from the warehouse) use 100% rainwater or old water change water. As with fish just start off feeding small amounts at a time until you get the hang of it, they will die quickly in polluted water but wont die of starvation as fast.

Have you considered hatching brineshrimp and using microworms for your eggs? They only take a day to hatch and they are allot more reliable than a daphnia culture.

yup we have not a big fan of brine shrimp myself and microworms we have a little bit but nowhere near enough thats why at the begining of the week i brought a daphnia culture told it was easy to culture them...

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Microworms are incredibly fast if you do it right. I put a teaspoon in a 2l ice cream container with porridge yesterday and today they are already starting to culture up the side. Don't forget to add yeast.

yup we got a small pottle of them here and they are climbing then they all seem to go back down again but we getting small feeds for the babies we have but i just paid a bit for this daphnia on monday and was hoping to use this as well for a mixture

so do u think i should just forget the daphnia?

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Brine shrimp nuplii are the best food value.

can also be very fiddly to deal with we havent had a good success rate with brine shrimp we just want something we can feed these little guys without all this hassle it takes the enjoyment out of it doing it whne everything u try is unsuccessful

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The way I did my Daphnia was to 3/4 fill a bathtub with water, I used tap water and waited a week and put in the daphnia culther and chucked in a banana skin and left them to it, from time to tim, like a week I would chuck in a pinch of grass, lawn clippings will do. when I couldn't see the banana skin, I would chuck another one in.

I have chucked in a whole rotten banana, and found it infested with red wormy things after a week, used those to feed the fish too.

Oh, if you can keep the bathtub partly shaded during summer would help too, otherwise it gets too hot and the daphnia will cook

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I have never used yeast on any culture of live foods,and have great success.

In the meantime why not try frozen baby brine shrimp,or even the product in the link below,it's brilliant stuff,lasts a long time,and there's no waste. Will give you a chance to get your cultures established.

http://www.oceannutrition.eu/products.aspx?Product=instant-baby-brine-shrimp

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can also be very fiddly to deal with we havent had a good success rate with brine shrimp we just want something we can feed these little guys without all this hassle it takes the enjoyment out of it doing it whne everything u try is unsuccessful

Daphnia is pretty easy just do it as everyone above has suggested :) Are daphnia small enough for newly hatched axys?

Brine shrimp are also very easy, get a 1.5L bottle, chuck 1L of water water in it and an airline (no airstone) 1TBS of salt shake it up and chuck in some eggs adjust the air till the water is boiling then in 24 hours you will have brine shrimp, siphon through a handkerchief and your done. Micros are even easier.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I feed my successful daphnia culture every 3 days or so on nothing but a cultured yeast mix. To do this I add 1 tsp of dried active yeast to about 30mm of water in a tall glass. Mix this with a fork until all yeast is disolved, and fork it vigourously to aerate the water. Continue doing this every 1/2 hr or so for 2 or 3 hours, then feed to the daphnia. For small ponds (eg old washing machine bowl) use 1/2 tsp yeast to start with.

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