Meet a real life Live Daphnia culturing wizard!

Added: 2026-05-01

[00:00:00]Hey everybody, Corey from Aquarian Co-op. Today we're going to learn about Daphnneia because we've got a Daphnneia wizard in the flesh and all of this is going on mad scientist level and I said people are going to want to know and by people I really meant me to have a guide to come back to in video. So please spill your guts on Daphnneia.

[00:00:21]>> Absolutely. So uh my name is SJ. We culture a lot of live foods is bare foundation of our larger fish room. Um, lots of our breeders enjoy live food.

[00:00:31]Daphnneia, there's plenty of videos out there on YouTube about how people culture them, what they feed them. I find that, um, if I run a larger culture, so each of these tubs, Daphnneia Magna, Daphne Moina, a lot harder to look into. But running these as my main cultures, this is what we harvest out of. You'll see the green water here. I have the 24-hour um, system of light continuously playing, things like that. Um but in terms of what we feed them, uh powdered fish food, yeast, um we do a lot of test feedings and things and the system that I like to run is again larger cultures that we harvest out of. Then we have smaller um satellite cultures is how I refer to them as. Um if you look, there are some that are kind of really scaling up and popping off. So we've got the Magna here that you can see. Then there's others that are a little bit dwindled down, but you still got steed shrimp. So, I do a lot of co- culturing.

[00:01:28]The only thing I don't want to co-culture with Daphnneia is hydra. Um, hydra will absolutely smash your Daphnneia. Um, you hear about it. I wish I could have gotten on video, but once I got like the biggest one of these bigger hunker Daphnneas I saw get bare armed by a hydra in one of my fry tanks and I was like, "Okay, they can absolutely take out fry if they can take out that size of a a Daphnneia." So, um, so yeah. So, outside of not culturing hydra, uh, making sure that the only thing that I'm making is usually invertebrates like cop pods, snails, we have pea puffers around. So, >> yeah, I noticed that there's a snails in all of them maybe.

[00:02:10]>> Yeah.

[00:02:11]>> Okay.

[00:02:12]>> Yeah, absolutely. So, we've got um with the feeding, you've got different densities of food. So, you have some that'll actually be sustained in the water column, you have others that go straight to the bottom. Uh, and then so for the things that go straight to the bottom, Daphne are filter feeders, so they're not going to really get be able to get to that food as easily. So, what I like is to make sure that their snails or some other type of u detrovore at the bottom. Uh, >> good words. That's what I was going to say and I was like, not everyone knows that word.

[00:02:42]>> Yeah. So, detravoir, right, said to eat the draus and to make sure that that is just still within the same system. So, it keeps the nutrients within the system. So eventually it'll either turn into green water infus soya or something where the daphnneia magnet it's more palatable to them basically. Um what you usually don't see because they're in the malm are blackworms. So there are black worms at the bottom of these. There's scuds um and most of them um scuds are really great at pulverizing different foods. So >> I find that variety is key with most things in life. Um it's absolutely key with some of the cultures. Um, so I feed a combination of things. Like I said, powdered fish food is one of those, but a lot of my go-tos outside of the powdered fish food are any kind of like algae wafer or um you can also do zucchini, right? Like the floral zucchini, things like that.

[00:03:35]>> Are you looking for it to like bloom after you put it in? Is there >> correct? Yes. So like um with my aquacultures, I treat them like I treat my vermma composting system. And so in vermma composting, right, so you're using red wiglers and things to make um what we call castings and that those castings go out into your garden and feed your plants, right? So there's um a nice vibrant community on vermma composting and what that entails. And so in that world, we refer to different foods as slow food or fast food. So you've got slower foods, which are things that are a lot harder to break down. um that's usually things like a watermelon rind or like an apple or something like that. And then you've got faster foods that are basically smaller micron size and so they're easier for the worms to ingest and kind of do something with. And so I usually just carry over that same tenant over to a lot of my other culturing systems. And in my head when I'm feeding I'm like, "Okay, is today a fast food day or a slow food day?" Um is this culture taking off? If it is taking off then we want more fast food. So >> fast food in Daphne land means um usually yeast. Um so this people can run into some trouble with um you can crash your culture really easily with um yeast but also >> too definitely right. And so that's why I like to mix green water in with my culturing system. Keeps the smell down, keeps the Daphnneia happy. So this it's really easy to overdo, but it's very easy to if you want to rev up a culture to do it predictably with the yeast. So what I find is I actually just powder it um with a coffee grinder.

[00:05:20]>> Obviously fish cream coffee grinder key one of the things as essential as a pipet in my opinion. Um, so just put the active dry yeast into that coffee grinder, pulverize it up, and it'll turn into what's more like a dust.

[00:05:35]>> Where would I find these super usable containers?

[00:05:40]>> Yeah. No, the >> getting a second life.

[00:05:42]>> There you go. Yeah, that's if you have um ideas about what to do with um yeah, your co-op containers. I'm sorry. I'm looking for the powder. Here it is. So what you'll have is I just have labels on everything because a lot of the things aren't in the form that I bought them in. So this is the powder, right?

[00:05:59]So it's just standard powder. And so you can do this >> and I usually just cut this water, >> mix it up, feed it to the Daphnneia.

[00:06:07]There are other ways to do this.

[00:06:09]>> How much powder?

[00:06:11]>> Yeah, sure.

[00:06:11]>> Like roughly because I I think it's like some people like feed a lot and like there's different amounts, different size containers.

[00:06:17]>> Yeah. I find that if I feed like this is too much. So this is a cool up scoop.

[00:06:24]>> Yeah.

[00:06:25]>> Right. This is overkill in terms of for something like for the big one like this. So if I wanted to do like one powder scoop of this to like we'll just cut it with however much water. It doesn't really matter. Shake it up. Put this in. If you're feeding that heavy, you want to be around to watch what's going on.

[00:06:44]>> Okay. So, I find that um different people have different takes on whether or not to run oxygen to Daphnneia cultures.

[00:06:52]>> I've had luck with both. I feel like if I could actually measure the oxygenation of the water, then I'd have more specific like takes on what's going on, but I do know that when the oxygen level drops, um things start to suffer a little bit. And so, usually when you put too much yeast into the water, um it's a lot harder for the daphnneia to like get set. I boil it down to fish room science like if you didn't want the air you probably wouldn't have it. So it's like h it's good enough to keep it I guess.

[00:07:20]>> Sure. It helps things circulating and things like that. And so as more organisms kind of show up. So it's not like culturing things are like Mary Poppins, right? So some of these things I feel like float in on the air. So like I didn't put copapods in here. They just showed up. Right. Like the snails I intentionally added the black worms.

[00:07:39]Yes. But like the copapods, the seed shrimp, like all the smaller things in here as cyclops, those things kind of just showed up. So I didn't add those things. So um as things like that mature and develop and little, um communities start to take off, I feel like more organisms are using up that oxygen in the water. And so at that point, it becomes a little bit more important, I think, to make sure you provide some aeration. So I feel like there's something there. Then that's why might there might be a discrepancy between people that recommend arration and not is because of the maturity of the culture. Sure. And and the number of organisms within it. But I'm not a scientist. That's just my fish.

[00:08:18]>> I always ask people like just show us how you're doing it. Other people can tell you they're wrong while they're doing it in their house. And they don't have to use air. But >> totes.

[00:08:25]>> Yeah.

[00:08:25]>> Totes. Yeah. So I feel like um there's lots of ways to do it. This is the way I do it. So the powder fish food, you just um dilute it in water, shake it up, beat it. That usually keeps Safhneia pretty happy. I try to feed usually once a day.

[00:08:40]>> Okay.

[00:08:40]>> Um to keep my cultures going. If I want to red something up, definitely once a day. If I want to just have them remain active and passively just kind of produce, I don't feed them. I just let them kind of do what they're doing. So, some of the snails will die because you're not providing so much food, create more green water, those types of things. So, like all these little ecosystems are usually self-sustaining.

[00:09:02]I've had any of these crash. We established this system over here around Christmas, so it could a little bit um for these guys.

[00:09:11]>> That' be about 3 months.

[00:09:13]>> Yep.

[00:09:13]>> And it's been pretty consistent. I haven't restarted any of these cultures.

[00:09:17]We just do water changes, things like that.

[00:09:19]>> How often So before we move on from food, how often do you do the long feeding of like a zucchini slice or something in these?

[00:09:26]>> Yeah. So usually what I try to do is feed it to where it would drop here. I try to do the long foods at least once a week. Okay. Um, that's typically something that keeps things going pretty steadily.

[00:09:37]>> I when you were talking, is it is it a slice? Is it a big hunk? Is it?

[00:09:40]>> Yeah. So, I would say it depends on what other detores you have in the system.

[00:09:44]So, mine are really thick with snails and blackworms and things. So, I would say like if you were to slice a zucchini in half and then slice that half into half, so a quarter.

[00:09:55]>> Okay.

[00:09:55]>> Um, and that's usually pretty good for like something like this.

[00:09:58]>> So, like a whole quarter chunk.

[00:10:00]>> Okay. So, that's quite a bit. Yeah.

[00:10:02]>> And it usually is gone within about 3 4 days.

[00:10:05]>> Um and that's if you know it's been previously frozen because obviously the cells in the vegetable kind of burst up and they're a little bit more palatable for for the things with the small amounts. But if you put like an entire raw piece of zucchini, it might take a little bit longer.

[00:10:20]>> And then so obviously we're feeding now we're water changing. Talk through that.

[00:10:24]>> Absolutely. So, usually when I harvest things, um, I use this net here. And so, I usually take a cup of whatever I'm harvesting, right? So, if it's like a cup of Daphnneia, then I'll go and I'll pour it over this sink over here. And so, we'll just pour it through. And I'll usually have another container with like water or something.

[00:10:46]I'll put the D.

[00:10:46]>> Can we harvest some and feed?

[00:10:48]>> For sure.

[00:10:48]>> Because there's gonna be people that watch this video that may have never seen it in real life. And like, this is a great example of like we have light.

[00:10:53]He could place. Totally. All right. So, we're going to have like a nice brush.

[00:10:58]And this is just filtered water. It's not RO. It's just um run through a carbon filter. So, you just have this here. And what I'll do is I'll take a cup of whatever culture. Usually, it's a cup that I only keep for this culture area. So this culture area is separate from the rest of our system because I'm pretty pretty strict on whether or not I did things >> okay >> across things because that's how you can get crosscontamination so hydra can show up stuff like that. So usually what I'll do is if I'm being good I'm collecting this water and actually using it on my plants.

[00:11:32]>> Um but for all intents of purposes I want to make sure I'm going through the right end of the net. We go through here.

[00:11:40]Just pour it out.

[00:11:43]Obviously, you can stick the net into the container and do this. But I like doing this because if I'm doing it often enough, obviously that's just one little net.

[00:11:54]>> Yeah.

[00:11:54]>> You do it often enough, then all you have to do is fill the water that you have, take it back over, and just top it off.

[00:12:04]And that's one way that I harvest.

[00:12:08]Another way is if I >> get the water change done.

[00:12:10]>> Exactly. So, another way if I'm doing like a heavier water change on some of these systems, what I'll do is I'll get just a hose, clip it, you know, hose, >> clip it, run it through the net, harvest that way, use that water in the garden, and then I will just >> take this, run it over here, >> and at that point, we have a rock spout that's called Daphne Island, and we'll just fire that off, and it'll fill it up. How do you decide when this one needs the big water change?

[00:12:43]>> Usually when I have a culture that's slowing down and I don't see a lot of Daphne on there, but I know that I'm feeding to where it would be productive if it's doing well.

[00:12:57]>> So, you're doing the right things, but it's not getting the result you want.

[00:13:00]>> Yes. That's when I try at least a 25% water change. That and in addition to if I fed really heavy and I'm like I know that I'm pushing it. Maybe I fed like a whole co-op scoop of yeast and I know that I'm working in the fish room. I'll come back and check and if it everybody starts to kind of come up to the edge right now the the snails are doing what they do, right? They're they're foraging and things, but I also have cherry shrimp. I have a lot of things in here.

[00:13:26]>> Oh, interesting. Cherry shrimp.

[00:13:27]>> Yeah. What they'll do is they'll they're my canary in the coal mine.

[00:13:30]>> That's so they'll come right up and then they'll just be like, "Hello, water, please.

[00:13:36]>> I can't you know." So they they are definitely telling me um hey more oxygen, right? And so at that point I'll be like okay this is a little too much.

[00:13:47]So I'll usually let it go for about an hour or so. Sometimes they are forging up there but a lot of times if they're still there after about an hour I'm like okay we'll change the water. So before I leave the fish room that night I'll do a 25% water change on that specific tub.

[00:14:02]Um, but that's usually how I run most of the health monitoring on my cultures because I don't have any of these crazy instruments that scientists use. Sure.

[00:14:10]>> Um, so I just I co- culture and usually the size of the animal um the bigger it is >> in rel in relation to what you're culturing. So, like if I'm culturing something super small like Daphnia, um I'll make sure to co-culture with either a plecco or like um a cherry shrimp or something like that, a larger animal that's going to tell me, hey, >> that's enough >> smart >> like world here that's in my that I like, right? Oxygen, food, they'll tell me, >> hey, do something.

[00:14:45]>> That's smart.

[00:14:46]>> So then I'll just let the nature speak to me in that way. So >> nice. Uh let me think here. So the water that goes in uh I want to make sure other people know cuz to my knowledge need to make sure no chlorine or chloromine will wipe it out. Is that your experience too?

[00:15:02]>> Um I would say that your strains so what people don't what I've come to understand is that with invert specifically it's a lot faster. whatever they build resilience to um it's just faster than what fish do. So like if you get a strain of Daphnneia for example that you know that person baby that Daphnneia, they only use rain water, they only after a certain amount of just slow incremental changes, I'll find that you'll eventually have a strain that's going to be used to what you do.

[00:15:36]>> Interesting. So, um, originally I had a strain that I got from my club auction and I knew that he only used drain water. So, what I would do is I would just incrementally start changing the water with filtered RO water >> and then I basically titrated it to where it was fully just decllorinated tap water.

[00:16:00]>> Yeah. Um, and then I've have heard of other folks who um have strains that they've are basically all they have to do is add the chlorinator to the water and they're fine. So really it's just kind of what you do is you slowly change it to what you're doing and be consistent at that point. Don't change things like that.

[00:16:22]>> Nice. And so you talk about strains. I see you're keeping two different strains. Maybe talk about some of the differences or why.

[00:16:28]>> Absolutely.

[00:16:29]>> Yeah. So Daphne and Magna are much larger. They're a couple of millimeters in like size. So if you were to look at them, that's what we harvested, right?

[00:16:37]So this is Magna. So huge pink people in there. Um and then there's Mina, which is a smaller strain. Um the reason why I keep both is fry grow at whatever rates they want to grow at. So you'll find that um different fry at different sizes will want different food. And so I find that Daphnneia, they're really great at filter feeding the fry powdered food that you feed your fry.

[00:17:08]>> So if I were to, let's say I'm trying to grow up a a group of CPDs. So the CBD fry, they're all relative sizes. They're all different rates of growth and things like that. None of them are large enough to eat a Daphnneia magna adult, >> right? Daphnneia Magna is obviously large. But Daphnneia are so prolific that if you were to put a like if I were to dump this entire thing into a 10gon with baby CBDs and feed it powdered fry food, these guys would procreate and make very small versions of themselves.

[00:17:44]And those small foods would eventually be enticing and palatable enough for the CPD fry. So you're feeding the tank, right? There's the idea of feeding the tank. So I powder the tank with fry food and some of that powder is getting eaten by the adult Daphnneia. Some of it's getting eaten by the very smallest of CPDs. And then you have those in between CPD sizes that are feasting on baby Daphnneia basically. And so that's kind of the value of something this large.

[00:18:13]>> And how often so like let's say you did inoculate a tank with those. How often are they having babies and things like that? like what's the reproduction rate when you say, "Hey, I want to make a lot more." Like what's your I guess ramp up time and things like that look like on these guys for you?

[00:18:28]>> Honestly, it's pretty quick with Daphnneia. So, I have um a tank over there with Corydoris hostatus and within that tank there's larger like adult Daphnneia that are in there. And so, if the water quality is good, if you don't have any hydra, which you don't want to have if you have fry, um usually because the hydro will predate on the fry. If water quality is good, Hydra are non-existent, then usually within a day or two, the Daphnneia will be still happy, you're feeding, if you're feeding powdered fry food consistently, you should have the Daphnneia appropriating at the normal rates that they would, which is exponential, right? So, um obviously Daphnneia um are asexually reproducing. So, within maybe a couple of days, you'll have, you know, Daphnneia babies. And so at that point it takes off pretty quickly. If you find that you inoculate a tank and it's not taking off pretty quickly, usually it's because you might have hydra or you might have other things pecking them off. Basically, >> do you run into any issues with like hang on back filters or canisters?

[00:19:32]>> Yes. So, I imagine that the finer the micron, the more trouble you would have just because in my experience, if it's I would say like if you did a co-op sponge with the extra fine version, >> I find that that's not as conducive to what environment they want. I'm thinking that it's taking out a lot of those particles that would be actually prefiltering the food they would want.

[00:20:00]So, I I would definitely say that I've had the most luck with like a coarse sponge filter. Okay. I haven't had any hang on backs. I can't imagine that they love the turbulence, >> right?

[00:20:13]>> So, I don't know that even if you had like um the a sponge on the intake that it would be like the best time for them.

[00:20:20]>> Um but it could also be a surface area thing. So, like if you had like a 20 long and you had to hang on back all the way over here and they had an area where it was slow water movement. So it's all about what kind of micro environments you also have to them and are providing to them. So think about it that way. Um you could maybe get around using a hanger.

[00:20:40]>> You run any filtration in these?

[00:20:41]>> Nope. They are all air driven. So there's aation. These are just airlines here. Very slow. Um there are in some of these I added some ceramic bio- rings.

[00:20:54]>> Um but obviously it's not being run through any kind of actual filters. So, they're just kind of like there as like surface area. Um, but outside of whatever is being established with these photosynthetic bacteras on the bottom, because again, this is a 24-hour light.

[00:21:09]So, you do have some folks that are metabolizing waste, but definitely not as efficiently as you would have if you had like an actual filter. So, >> so a couple other things. How are you keeping green water? Like, are you culturing it somewhere else? Cuz these guys will eat it all if you're not careful. Right.

[00:21:26]>> Correct. Yes. So a lot of the what's happening here is different cycles. So I've got a system now where I have one mega culture of each kind, right? So you got your magna, your molina, and then I have three satellite coaches of each kind or four I guess for the molina. And so what happens is you kind of it's kind of like um skateboarding. So like you kind of just go with the flow. And so some of these are going to have green water that are going off really well. So like these guys here, then others are going to be like, okay, the daphany are blooming in these. So, and this that's when the green water's kind of dialing down. Usually, I'll have at least two or three of these that have an active green water culture. And so, what I do when I want to harvest green water to feed to something else, I do the same thing. So, this is a very, very, very fine is it baby Brian shrimp net? Oh, I would just use the exact same net system that we would have used. And so, instead of harvesting dapnia, you're harvesting green water. So, guess you could harvest the dapnia. We just keep the green water, right? So >> then you would do this.

[00:22:30]I always pick the wrong side of these things. Run it through. And this catches the copapods in addition to all the other things, but absolutely catches the Daphnneia. And actually, you can put this one in water so you can see it cuz this is >> might have been Lena. So he gets we can see the size of people.

[00:22:50]>> Well, sometimes you get some contaminants. So this uh Asian lady beagetle met her demise in there. So that's what that orange thing is. But that's adult Mina which is a lot different than >> which is much smaller >> much much smaller and I would say more tolerant of less air.

[00:23:08]>> Okay.

[00:23:09]>> In my experience but maybe it's just a thing that >> if someone was going I'm going to try Daphnneia for the first time. Which one of those two do you recommend for them to you want to go smaller or you want to go with the bigger magna?

[00:23:22]I mean, obviously what fish they keep?

[00:23:23]>> I would want to know. Well, definitely what fish are they keeping? Um, >> this strain came from Carolina Biologicals did.

[00:23:34]>> I don't know if it's a matter of source, but I've would recommend people trying the Molina.

[00:23:41]>> Okay.

[00:23:42]>> And just doing them in a jar.

[00:23:43]>> You seem to be and order those up.

[00:23:45]They're like 40 bucks plus shipping, but you know, anyone could you could order that right now.

[00:23:49]>> But it's my experience that these guys seem to be a lot more tolerant of just different things that you want to try.

[00:23:55]However, I find that these are really rewarding to feed off of, especially if you have larger fish. Um, the way that I kind of in my mind I'm like, "Okay, are we making enough Daphnneia?" Usually, uh, my wife will ask like, "Hey, what's going on with the Daphnneia magnet?" Cuz she uses them for her wild discus.

[00:24:12]>> Okay.

[00:24:13]>> Yeah. still come and ask me about that.

[00:24:15]Um, but this is how we harvest green water. So then what you have is just green water.

[00:24:20]>> Mhm.

[00:24:20]>> That's obviously hydrree because you have to be hydroedied and all these other things. So then what I would do is I would just feed it off to another culture. So then it's, you know, >> and then I'll play the internet. What if I'm at home and I don't have green water? Do I order it? Do I make it? How do I >> Honestly, it's a lot easier than you think to make it. Honestly, um I didn't start any of these with like a a pure green water anything um from the internet. I literally took I breathe superworms for my bearded dragon. I took a dead superworm and just regular water, threw it in there, and with the light and the dead superworm, it just green water instantly. So, basically a mummy source, you could do it with easy green, right? So, >> yep, that's I've done that a lot. I've done a handful easy green shrimp in, you know, fish safe. Take a whole bunch, >> let it go, it'll be green in less than a week. So, you know, that's something that you can do.

[00:25:21]>> Do you find how much light matters or just 24 hours? Like, does it need to be super bright or not so much?

[00:25:26]>> Honestly, I've had success with one that runs 24 hours and I've also had success with one that cycles with the fish room lights. So the other systems that we have set up in the other room, that's a normal fish room light cycle.

[00:25:44]>> Um I find that with the satellite cultures, they seem to be much more tolerant of the number of occupants when the light spectrum is just like full on 24 hours all the time. I don't know if that's because of the photosynthetic bacteria that are actually like metabolizing everything and just kind of keeping everything going. That could be it. I don't know if that's a thing. Uh, but it could be.

[00:26:10]>> All right, let's feed some and then let's check out those satellite cultures cuz I know they're basically like in buckets and people This looks real like oh, I don't know if I could build all that. That that's that's a lot where Oh, I have a bucket.

[00:26:21]>> Yeah. So, I find that um I don't know if you want to eat them here.

[00:26:27]>> Wherever you would like. I'm just >> Yeah. So, I feel like our our rice fish really love them and they usually know what's going on.

[00:26:36]>> Oh, yeah. They're they're they know >> what I can do.

[00:26:45]Let's do this.

[00:26:48]Yeah. Now, they One of the things I love about Daphneia is if they don't eat it all for some reason, they just live and make more. Whereas like a brine shrimp like well they don't live forever in fresh water struggle with these leads sometimes but ah so then the daphnne will be attracted to the light and as soon as all the the dry kind of settles there you'll be able to see >> oh yeah there's a bunch right down here too and so yeah you know twoinch fish eating the magna no problem >> uh we do a lot of clown killish breeding So, rocket killies are fun. These guys really like the Molina.

[00:27:31]He's a lot smaller.

[00:27:36]They kind of know.

[00:27:37]>> Yeah. It's They're eating them, but it's because they're not orange like brine shrimp, they're hard to see cuz they're translucent, too.

[00:27:45]>> Yeah.

[00:27:46]>> Yeah. So, a lot of fun to feed there. And then the satellite cultures you can go and talk about.

[00:27:54]>> Yeah, let's take a look at those. So, and I'm guessing you recommend to keep multiple cultures going. I know I've crashed my culture >> always.

[00:28:01]>> Yeah.

[00:28:02]>> Yeah. Even if you aren't going to crash a culture, I think having multiple cultures going because you're going to have some going gang busters, some not.

[00:28:08]Right. So, you've got this is the guy that's this I would say mid, you know, in terms of like production, but there are some folks in there and I feel like if I fed them, they would all be kind of at the top.

[00:28:19]>> Mhm. Um, this one is a relic of my old system. So, I used to have this whole table full of these tubs and I got it to a point where I could dial it in and keep it in a smaller footprint. So, >> nice.

[00:28:31]>> Super exciting for us because then we could use this area for different projects. And so, here's another example.

[00:28:38]>> So, no air in the swing.

[00:28:39]>> Exactly. So, here's another example of a satellite culture, but this one is batch style. So, this is a style that I started experimenting with about 2 three weeks ago. So what I did was I literally just harvested as much green water as possible for my cultures during a water change.

[00:28:54]>> Threw it all in here, did one scoop of Daphnneia into that bucket, let it go, and I just fed it regularly like I fed the other cultures, and I noted that they did really, really well. So they came out.

[00:29:06]>> I tried these two out um differently. So this guy has um >> a slew of the bio rings at the bottom here. And so bio- rings, green water, no snails, no nothing, just the green water and the Daphnneia. And I was like, "Okay, I wonder if snails or anything make a difference." And this one I started with no rings at the bottom, but they do have snails. This one's a little bit more of a co- culture. And so I find that with co- cultures, it's just you kind of at that point are putting a lot of eggs in the hands of nature and figuring it out, right? So there's less control here, but more stability. I find that this culture can handle whatever I throw at it really. And I feel like when you know what you're doing and you can scale it up and down and you're ready to like risk it all basically in this one bucket. Um then you can kind of be rewarded by that batch kind of style.

[00:29:58]And so this is more reminiscent to me of like how we culture run trip now, right?

[00:30:03]Like in one container and then at some point you'll harvest all of this, feed it all off. You would run into any issues with like calcium or pH crashing or anything.

[00:30:13]That's a good question.

[00:30:16]I haven't because I change water every time I harvest.

[00:30:19]>> Okay.

[00:30:19]>> I find that if I have a concern, so if I'm looking at the Daphnneia and it's easier to observe with magna, if they're um molting and they're molt seem like they're kind of sticking to the larger organisms >> and I'm like that looks like a sketchy mold. I'll throw in some easy shrimp and snail. So, I'll throw in at least one of those into just a large bin like that and I'll be like, "Okay, let me try that." Um, I also try to run crushed coral with a lot of my any of my systems really um just because of that our water is just a little bit softer. Um, so yeah, I would say if you stay on top of your husbandry, you shouldn't have problems with pH crashes, but usually the animals will tell you something's wrong before it actually happens. So, I find that I'll see a bunch of cherry shrimp at the top or something. You you can take >> Yeah, I think that's the thing I'm going to take away is like, yeah, the the canary and the mine shaft is what I don't have, and I just wait until uh oh, the the the daphnia were the canary and they're dead now. Like, uh oh, I waited too long.

[00:31:22]>> Yeah. And and I can find that they're usually pretty tolerant of like literally anything but like chemicals.

[00:31:28]So like the overspray of >> gosh like hand soap or >> I use um bleach and stuff to kind of sanitize some of our hoses and things.

[00:31:38]So I have to be really careful about where I'm spraying that. Um so yeah, they seem to be sensitive with those things. But in terms of like ammonia, they feel I haven't tested these with the strips. I could >> I've tested before. In my experience, they can they can live in ammonia off the charts and right off the charts. But that's why I was asking about chlorine cuz like chemicals the smallest amount like oh you had perfume on your wrist you have a dead culture like yep >> or a little bit of soap from washing your hands cuz you're worried about getting perfume play with your dogs and you have like flee and tick stuff on them like yeah that that turns into like a whole thing. So >> So I think my last question cuz I know the internet will be asking like you've got all of this daphnneia and I know you guys sell fish. Do you sell and ship any daffier?

[00:32:24]>> Um, we haven't before, but I can't imagine that it would be any different than shipping um shrimp. So, we've definitely done that before.

[00:32:30]>> All right. We'll put some up on the screen and you guys can >> try and figure out what's that price cuz I I know I've ordered Daffany online a bunch and it's I'm I always more reassured when like I could do a bucket where it's like you start reading the supply and they're like, okay, there's they're explaining it for like a scientist lab and you're like, well, I don't know if I have that. I don't have the $300 green water cultury thing. And >> you don't even need a carbon filter. I Well, depending on your water, right?

[00:32:58]So, if you have chloromines or whatever, but I even did this bucket. Um, I sat out with just regular tap water and I let it do the evaporation. So, like I didn't add decllorinator to that.

[00:33:09]>> Nice.

[00:33:09]>> And then the green water that went in there was obviously green water from the other cultures.

[00:33:12]>> Any last must know Daphnneia things while people sat through 33 minutes. And so, they're they're invested into getting Daphnneia going. any last, you know, I would do this.

[00:33:23]>> Understand what your habits are and build your culture around your habits.

[00:33:29]If you know that you're a lazy fish keeper, >> that's me.

[00:33:32]>> There is a way to do Daphnneia where it's >> prolific enough because they are fakund enough. If you get them dialed in, you'll be fine. But don't go in thinking like, okay, I'm gonna be out here feeding lots of yeast and then lots of water changes. Like, yes, to shoot for the moon, land among the stars, but you if you know that you are a lazy Daphne keeper, then maybe start off with a frozen piece of zucchini >> in the bucket. I'm totally going to throw the Daphne on top after a couple of days, like you know that, right?

[00:34:05]>> I might even be a step lazier. I'm going to try green beans out of a can.

[00:34:08]>> Yep. Green beans out of a can, right?

[00:34:10]Um, I said earlier about the fried food, like if you know that you're not into weird stinky stuff, maybe do like the powdered fry food or like something like that, right? Something that you're already tolerant enough. I know in my mind the way I'm going to approach it cuz I've got daffia at home. I'm going to target feed like shrimp and snails in the tank and then feed a little bit on the daphnia and I'm going to try to get my culture sustaining on feeding the tank or the shrimp and then I get this amount of Daphnneia as a byproduct instead of I need pounds of Daphnneia.

[00:34:42]>> Yes. And then the second big takeaway is understand that if your culture isn't as tolerant to however you're keeping it in the beginning, don't be deterred.

[00:34:53]Continue doing what you're doing and stay with it. Even if you get like a handful of survivors, reset it, reset it, reset it, and keep doing what you're doing. And eventually, you'll have a strain that's thriving for you in your environment that you have set up.

[00:35:05]>> I thought about one more question that I was going to ask off camera, and I thought, ask it here. Have you run into any temperature sensitivity? like don't let them go above this or >> That's a good question. Um so we run our fish room right now it's running a little cooler because we have the windows and things open. So our actual fish room ambient temperature is anywhere from like 83 to 84 depending um >> yeah so >> so the actual tank temperature though that's usually around 75 78 just depending on where they are in the fish room. Yeah >> the lights themselves do get off some heat. Um, I find that Daphnneia are they don't mind hot and I feel like they're less productive when it's colder. So, it's not that they're impossible to breed or do, it's just that their metabolism slows down just like any other organism. And so, you'll find that it's a lot more frustrating to be like, "All right, come on, take off." You know, and so it's probably a lot easier to overfeed and things during those times. And if you know anything about algae, or at least the algae that I grow, usually when it's warmer, it's a lot easier to grow green water. Um, it's a lot harder to do that in cold water. So, >> awesome. Well, if you stayed this long to learn about Daphneia, make sure you watch the other video about their entire fish room because it's also amazing and you'll get another hour and 45 minutes of straight learning.