Does anyone here in Ottawa go and catch their own daphnia/fairy shrimp and if so, where do you go to catch them? I'm interested is trying this where I have many finicky fish to feed. I saw a post on Facebook about PRAC's annual live food collecting excursion and was wondering if something like this could happen here.
Thanks!
Back in the September meeting, there was a presentation on fairy shrimp but I don't remember what his user name was.
http://ovas.ca/forum/index.php?topic=58429.0
I have a daphnia culture i personally collected over 2 years ago. It's doing great.
I also harvested fairy shrimp last year. ..but upon reading up on them discovered they are seasonal. They died. Now is the time to look for fairy shrimp before all the vernal pools dry out.
Lol if you want daphnia easy, scoop some out of the pond plant tubs at Ritchie. I saw them in there last year.
To find them try to look for a low area that is dry by early summer but floods every spring and stays wet (water)for a month or two.
I also have daphnia cultures that I started 8 years ago, the ponds they came from don't exist any more it's all houses now.
If you like the idea of fairy shrimp, you can order the Thai fairy shrimp eggs online. I started some afther Christmas in a 2.5 gallon thank with a heater and a pump set to a bubble a second. I had hundreds of them that matured and some of them lived for about 3.5 months. I am using a regular desk lamp with a fluorescent bulb for light. The eggs had been in my fridge for 6 years.
I started left overs from a triops kit a week ago and no triops but 1 male beavertail fairy shrimp grew 1 inch in less than a week and a bunch of red tailed fairy shrimp. Both species occur in the same vernal pools in the southern states.
Feeding is easy, I have a small jar with 50/50 spirulina and chlorella, drob a bit onto the water twice a day. According to research that I had read, they grow faster on a combination of chlorella and spirulina. I added white pond snails as a cleanup crew.