Even when I was a little kid with some guppies and stuff I could catch in the ditches around New Orleans, I knew live food was better than dead food. Of course back then, fish food in a can was like smashed up biscuits. There was not any flake yet, and the quality was 'less than optimal'. I spent hours with library books of the great early tropical fish people. They had these exotic pictures of live foods that was obviously their secret weapon with keeping the fish alive and breeding. All kinds of exotic worms, brine shrimp, and the (it seemed to me at least), the most holy of holy foods.... Daphnia

Daphnia and Mosquito larvae

Even now there is a mystique around daphnia. Hard to keep, hard to raise. And the never ending debate, are they nutritious or just a laxative. I had seen them in bottles and bags at a couple of aquarium auctions, and with great reverence I would look at them with awe. I did not have the courage to get them until this spring. I bought a couple of Rubbermaid big blue tubs that the labels says hold 23 gallons. I sat them outside the back door where they would get some sun, put in some leaves and a couple of pieces of dry dog food. The dog food puffs up, the bacteria goes ballastic and the mosquitoes move in. Cool, I am feeding mosquito larvae in great quantities. Somewhere in here, along with the frogs, tadpoles and other problems, one of the tubs gets a great dark green color. Green Water!!!! Wow. I quickly order some daphnia, get them in.

I set up a couple of plastic file boxes in the basement with an airstone. In go the daphnia. I am feeding them with water from the outside green tub, sifted through a brine shrimp net. The net catches the mosquito larvae which gets fed, and the green water I feed to the daphnia.

Every day I take out 1/2 gallon of water from each plastic file box, pouring it through a brine shrimp net to catch and return any daphnia. This water goes to the pepper plants in the garden (best harvest this year ever!) Then I get a gallon of water from the outside tub and split it with the two file boxes.

Between the three tubs outside, one usually has some green algae. Finally I screw something up and the algae is gone and the daphnia are starving.

I get some Certified Organic strained baby food, sweet potatoes or winter squash. A teaspoon of that swirled around in some water gets fed to the daphnia. I may be getting more daphnia this way than I was with the green water! Somewhere along the way the daphnia have managed to get into all three tubs outside, so the green water does not get very green anymore. I am now feeding both the inside daphnia and the outside three tubs with the baby food. I can feed about 20 tanks of babies every day one time.

Hey, so far this is working. And if you have not had daphnia and thought they were hard to do, this should have showed you that you can do them.