Russian Red daphnia Live count 200 + (USPS Ground Advantage)
The exact species is unspecified. We do not specify or guarantee the exact
species but you can send a sample to a lab and spend $1000 to find out if you
have to know.
The daphnia cultures start out shipped in green water -- but will eat it
before you see it. We have options to ship bags of green water separate from
the daphnia -- message us.
The daphnia will number at least the number indicated in the ad and will be
shipped by USPS Ground Advantage (see our ads for insulated boxes and Priority
mail if you are in Hawaii or in an area of extreme heat). This is a culture we
have had for over 12 years and I was told it is from an original culture taken
from the Moscow Zoo alligator pond in the 60's.
Shipping Info
We ship using USPS depending on your location. We ship only on Monday through
Wednesday to avoid the weekend USPS issues.
DAPHNIA CAN LIVE RIGHT DOWN TO FREEZING. THANKS Please don't leave negative
feedback -- contact me first , thanks. If you have a problem with your daphnia
I need pictures to reship your daphnia. First contact me before leaving any Bad
feed back Please.
Additional info on daphnia culturing
TL;DNR is a relatively new shortcut to understanding a modern phenomenon –
many or most people have short attention spans. It becomes a joke when the N is
left off – indicating that it is comical when you actually take the time to
read a long article – or in this case – a long Ebay description. If for
whatever reason you don’t have the time or stamina to read long articles or
descriptions – just stop here – but if you are interested in some tips and info
on daphnia and their feeding and culturing – read on.
Instructions for the feeding and propagation of daphnia.
Culturing daphnia can be easy or difficult depending on how observant you are
and how careful you are in following instructions. To paraphrase Joseph
Campbell’s famous quotation about computers -- “Daphnia are like old testament
gods; lots of rules and no mercy”.
Water should be cleared -- but it may never become ‘clear’ before feeding.
Yellow or brown water is the usual color of the ‘cleared water’ -- with the
food filtered out by the daphnia -- and the ‘cleared’ but colored water is
usually not food for the daphnia -- it is usually residue from algae cell
walls, and other detritus. ‘Calibrate’ your eyeballs by noting the difference
between water with particulates in it -- food for filter feeders such as
daphnia -- as opposed to just colored water without suspended ‘stuff’. A ring
of daphnia shells at the water’s edge and black detritus on the bottom is
normal. We recommend doing a water change once per week by getting a small
container of aged fish water. Pour all of the water -- daphnia and all through
a fine net -- allowing the old water to go down the drain. Put the daphnia from
the net into the small container of water. The solids at the bottom of the
daphnia culture are bacteria colonies that convert ammonia and nitrites and
generate infusoria -- transfer at least some of this detritus to the ‘new’
container with the daphnia. Hair algae is a problem -- remove it or the daphnia
can be trapped in it as daphnia are naturally prickly like burrs. You will
normally find hair algae clinging to the airline tubing like streamers in the
wind -- pick it out and discard it. Clean the bucket or container you are using
by using a washcloth to get the green slime and other coatings off the sides of
the container. Use no cleaning agents -- no soap -- no chlorine.
Pour the small container with the daphnia into your bucket or tank. No
contaminants should be in the water as the daphnia are sensitive to pollution,
chemicals, and dissolved metals. If you suspect there is copper in your water
possibly from brand new copper pipes, etc. -- you can add a small bag of
activated charcoal or even leave some on the bottom like gravel. Charcoal will
soak up metals but it will become coated with slime and will eventually need to
be replaced with new charcoal. We recommend using only aged fish water -- save
some from you fish tank water changes. We do not use charcoal.
Fill the bucket or tank to a normal level -- the depth of the water is not
critical as long as it is over 5 inches or so. More water volume allows for
more oxygen and more room for growth of the daphnia. An airline with a slow
stream of bubbles is all that is necessary -- we recommend a piece of hard
tubing or something to weigh down the airline so it stays under the water. Fast
bubbling and airstones can trap air inside the daphnia shell or splash them out
on the container wall. The stream of air bubbles must generate a flow of water
from the bottom of the container to the surface. The water temperature is not
critical. Any temperature from 55 to 75 F is optimal. The daphnia will be alive
all the way down to freezing but they will be less active and have less growth
at the cooler temperatures. Above 75 F they will survive with proper aeration
but as the temperature is higher there is less oxygen and increased problems
with bacteria or yeast blooms could consume all of the oxygen and suffocate the
daphnia.
Daphnia will be more ‘red’ at higher temperatures but this color is due to
increased amounts of hemoglobin -- not color enhancements. We don’t claim the
red color of the daphnia as a color enhancement food. The daphnia will almost
always appear red when seen from above in a net. Lighting and the reflective
shell may make them appear less red in your container.
Some aquarists make their own powdered food – usually a mixture of brewer's
yeast, spirolina powder, or even powdered hiker's drink mixes. The amount of
food to feed depends on the density of your culture and how fast they eat the
food. A large culture of ten thousand in a four gallon bucket would use about
one eighth of a teaspoon every two days. You can mix the daphnia food in a
small container of water before adding it to the daphnia or just mix it in the
bucket or container with the daphnia. The water should be clear before feeding
and the amount of cloudiness represents the food in the water. Some people use
a stick with a white disk stapled to the bottom (a homemade turbitity meter).
There is an ‘X’ or other markings in black and markings on the stick to measure
the depth. This is a turbidity meter and the length of the stick under water
before you cannot see the ‘X’ allows you to adjust the amount of food added to
get the same density or cloudiness regardless of the volume of the daphnia
container. It is safest to mix a little green or blue spirolina and only feed
when the color is gone – at this point the invisible ingredients are presumably
also completely eaten.
Green water is what many sources of daphnia information suggests as the food
for daphnia. We have a limited amount due to our greenhouse but we have found
green water’ to be unreliable and easier to ‘crash’ than any daphnia culture.
Some issues in culturing green water to consider is to keep the water fairly
soft (70 to 150 ppm) and add some finely powdered flake food. The bacteria that
consumes the powdered food will also stabilize the pH. We add some plant food
for fertilizer. The problem for the daphnia comes when there is an excess of
bacteria in the green water using up all the oxygen (the algae does not care
and will appear normal). Be sure there are no harmful metals in the fertilizer
use activated carbon? Use green water if you have it but if not -- do not
despair. Live and fresh green algae -- ‘green water’ -- appears to not be
necessary for the propagation of daphnia. In a recent week we sent out boxes of
daphnia cultures totalling in excess of 70,000 daphnia that had been thriving
and propagating in just one four gallon bucket for a week before shipping. They
had been living and cloning with only powdered food for their sustenance.
Strong lighting and heaters are not necessary for the daphnia -- strong
lighting will just grow more hair algae and really warm water has less oxygen
dissolved in the water. The green water we send out with some of our packages
is there in case you want to start culturing green water. Most people just feed
it to the daphnia as a snack after the shock of shipping.
Adjust the amount of food starting with just a pinch if there are just a few
daphnia and pay attention to the time it takes for them to ‘clear’ the water.
Two days to clear the water is a good starting point. Once you have a regular
system figured out and you have a lot of daphnia -- you can measure the daphnia
in your net when doing water changes and harvest/feed any amount of daphnia
over what you find optimal for your container. Remember that at some point the
numbers of daphnia, yeast, and bacteria in the container begin to affect the
oxygen content and a ‘bloom’ of yeast or bacteria or a ‘boom’ of daphnia can
quickly consume all of the oxygen and suffocate the daphnia. Overfeeding can
produce excessive amounts of decomposing food and the resulting toxins of
ammonia and nitrites in quantities above the ability of the natural bacteria
colonies to convert/consume.
Some things to know about daphnia in general -- and specifically about our
russian reds’ : most or all daphnia propagation is by the females producing
live young -- usually all females and clones of the mother -- about 8 to 10 per
week or so -- growth is quicker at higher temperatures and with higher feeding.
Our ‘russian reds’ are smaller than ‘magna’ species and larger than ‘moina’ and
this may be due to a kind of line breeding without line outcrossing. The
babies’ are similarly smaller. The original strain is said to have come from
the alligator pond at the Moscow Zoo -- all the way back in the early 1960’s.
Russian Reds rarely produce ‘resting eggs’ and therefore you may never see
males or eggs. My research on the origins of our strain gave me the idea years
ago to name this strain “Russian Red”. The name seems to have taken on a life
of its own is a common name for daphnia sold online. Other strains -- wild ones
for instance -- may produce cysts/eggs under adverse conditions -- the ‘russian
reds’ appear to not do this. We recommend keeping the cultures indoors as
culturing outdoors will almost certainly result in mosquito larvae or even
dragonfly larvae in the water and some wandering bird or insect can infect your
culture with hydra. When your lousy neighbor calls the board of health on you
because he is afraid that your outdoor tubs will cause him to get West Nile
Virus -- you will wish you had kept your cultures indoors. I recently found a
way to sort daphnia from mosquito larvae using a tall graduated beaker that
comes with the purchase of a hydrometer. Catch your net of daphnia and
concentrate it into about a 10 ounce cup of water. Pour the water with the
daphnia and larvae into the beaker. After 30 seconds or so most of the daphnia
will be on the bottom and the larvae at the top. Pour off the larvae and fill
and repeat a couple of times and most or all of the larvae will be decanted
away. Note that the hydrometer may be an essential tool to check the water
hardeness – our water is very hard at 450 ppm and we mix it with rain water to
bring it down to between 70 and 150 ppm.
The ingredients of our food contains yeast, spirulina powder, vegetable
flours, crushed flake food, and some minerals for shell growth and pH
stabilization of the water. Sediments of the flours and anything that ends up
on the bottom will generate bacteria and infusoria. The yeast is alive and
there is food for the yeast in our food also. Be careful not to overfeed as the
yeast and/or bacteria can ‘bloom’ and consume all of the oxygen.
Filtration is not recommended as daphnia are filter feeders and require the
food particles, live yeast, free floating algae (live or otherwise), bacteria,
and infusoria that are floating in the water column. Any filter is likely to
pull all of the above into the filter media leaving food for the daphnia only
in the time immediately after feeding and before the water clears. If you have
to use a filter then use a tight pored sponge filter and squeeze out the
nutrients every day. The de-nitrification bacteria that are normally in the
filter media are present in limited quantities -- in the water column, on the
bottom, and on all surfaces in the bucket or container. Circulation of the
water and aeration is all that is necessary (along with allowing some of the
bottom detritus in the net with the daphnia to go into the cleaned container
after each water change to allow the bacteria to continue their good work. In
the spirit of ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ consider that the bacteria,
infusoria, and free floating algae provide the variety of sizes of food for the
variety of sizes of the daphnia from new to old.
The nutritional value of crustaceans is always an area of misunderstanding.
When we had a store customers would point to the high water content (over 90%)
of water in frozen brine shrimp (artemia). My answer to that was to tell a
story I heard about how the Eskimos survived without fresh vegetables. Everyone
now knows that vitamin C and other nutrients are not available in meat or fat
and lacking a constant supply of vegetables the Eskimos should have succumbed
thousands of years ago to scurvy and other vitamin deficiencies. So how did the
Eskimos survive without the benefits of fresh fruit and vegetables? The answer
is that there is no vitamin C in fat or muscle but vitamin C and all the other
required nutrients are somewhere in the animal’s body. Vitamin C is in the
brain and B-12 is in the liver. If you are ever killed and eaten by a bear --
be assured that he will temporarily ignore your superb musculature and eat your
liver first. The Eskimos of course have survived by a tradition of finding ways
to eat the entire animal. This is the benefit of feeding your fish live food --
by eating the entire animal your fish are getting all the proteins and vitamins
that science has discovered -- and perhaps some they do not yet know about. An
additional benefit of feeding crustaceans to your fish is that the shells
provide the calcium required for skeletal growth -- and your aquatic pets are
most likely to be vertebrates.
Due to the vagaries of shipping we occasionally have a customer email us
asking what to do when half of the daphnia were killed in transit. Our answer
is that they did not die from any disease -- never medicate -- but that the
deaths were likely to be from water pollution or low oxygen -- or occasionally
caused by cooking or freezing. If some portion of the shipped daphnia are dead
we recommend following the setup procedure above for a water change and feed
them some of the enclosed food -- a pinch or so. The dead daphnia can be
transferred to the new container without a problem although you may want to
make another water change in a day or two. There should always be daphnia
shells in the water -- usually floating or forming a ring at the water's edge
this ring and floating shells are not dead daphnia. I wipe off the ring with
my finger and feed it to my smaller fish. The shells indicate that the daphnia
are growing and an old shell is cast off and a new one formed in each growth
stage -- or instar. The shells quickly decompose and become part of the
village’ of life in the water.
Most aquarists appear to not have OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and
eventually neglect to give proper care to their culture -- and a ‘crash’
occurs. Remember that the ‘russian reds’ are unlikely to have produced any
resting eggs/cysts and they will not ‘reappear’ from hatched eggs/cysts. We
recommend having at least one other ‘safety’ culture in a separate container --
fed very lightly -- to carry on the strain when the main food culture
crashes’. Technically only one female is required to repopulate the culture.
All of our daphnia may be genetically identical to the original female(s)
collected in that alligator pond in the 1960’s.
As an extra credit bonus I will provide one last piece of information. The
reproduction by females cloning themselves is called ‘parthenogenesis’ and it
is quite rare -- usually only normal in crustaceans and rotifers. In
vertebrates ‘cloning’ is usually confined to identical twins. ‘Cloning’ is a
popular science fiction topic and check out this web page for some examples
from the fertile minds of SF writers :.
Sexual reproduction is not just for the variety available in genetic mutations
it appears to be required for most species to stay a step or two ahead of
viruses -- viva la viruses! Without the slight shuffling of the proteins in our
cells -- viruses would mutate to exactly match any set of identical protein
structure and take us out as a species. Modern science can currently only
clone’ with great difficulty and perhaps only with females -- you may have
heard of Dolly -- the sheep. If science progresses and some of the science
fiction predictions above become true -- eventually the human species may be
represented by females only -- and perhaps by the repeatedly cloned DNA of just
one female. I have noticed a competitiveness between females and a certain
disdain for the male of the species. I can foresee a time in the distant future
when females have achieved the ultimate breakout through the ‘glass ceiling’
and eliminated the sex with the pesky excess of testosterone. Ultimately there
may be just billions of female humans with a limited DNA set or if they really
can’t get along -- one set of identical DNA with identical protein structures.
As a male of the species I can only take solace in this bleak future by
considering the probability that ‘revenge’ will eventually be exacted on the
ultimate pure ‘XX’ s of the future -- by mutated ‘viruses’.