artemia nauplii culture

[shergill00]

Was going through seriouslyfish.com today and in most of fishes I checked artemia and daphnia was recommended as food for them. Anyone having experience of having cultured them. Lot of information was available on net but wanted to know from first hand experience if anyone is culturing it.

[deepesh]

Artemia are brine shrimp. From what I have read on the net I get the impression that they are a hassle to grow to adulthood and keep culturing and luck has a major role to play. As my teacher used to say "the patient seems to have gotten better in spite of your best efforts, young man". Just replace patient with artemia.

Daphnia are similar, just that whereas artemia cultures fail in saltwater daphnia fail in freshwater. Same difference.

Actually I have some daphnia in a bucket outside, but they don't do so well. I get maybe 10 or 15 a week. A proper daphnia farmer will laugh at me. If you want I will set aside two weeks catch for you. Should be about 30 or so. You will have to figure out a way to culture them and tell me the secret. The daphnia just hang in there and I ignore them. All that i do is try and keep the pigeons from shi**ing in the bucket for once that has happened and the bucket stank to high heaven. Twice in the past I have tried to culture them by fiddling around with the bucket and the daphnia all died. Just the other day I went to collect more daphnia and guess what... Somebody had taken a dump there too.

[Romi]

Somebody had taken a dump there too.

ha ha. If that somebody was a bird (and not a primate!), they actually did your Daphnia a favour, bro. The best fert for daphnia is chicken manure, and a pigeon's cant be that bad either. ..

you should make two containers of a size similar to your culutre, and in teh second c0ontainer, u add a tiny pinch of chickpea flour (Besan). This is such a popular food for Daphnia in the US, some hobbyists actually go to Indian stores to buy it for Daphnia.

And if possible, procure some chicken manure and add a pinch every 3-4 days. But leave the main culture alone... I have done a fair bit of work pottering around Daphnia containers, and it did work, but i decided it was too much effort for too little.

[deepesh]

I have done a fair bit of work pottering around Daphnia containers, and it did work, but i decided it was too much effort for too little.

You've hit the nail on the head! That's the reason I just ignore the daphnia.

When the pigeon pooped into the bucket there was a great big bacterial bloom and that killed off that particular lot of daphnia. Maybe because it was fresh off the assembly line and also too much in quatity! fresh chicken manure is described as "hot" - too rich in organic material and too high in bacterial load. It needs to compost for some time before it can be safely used for plants or otherwise.