[Music] hey guys welcome to the channel today I'm going to be showing you a daphnia culture that I set up so that I would have more live food to feed to my fish [Music] tank this is my 20-gallon community fish tank I have Guppies in it different kinds of tetras I have some mystery snails I have lots of different kinds of shrim [Music] Cory [Music] catfish these guys have no problems eating the flakes and the pellets that I feed [Music] them but live food really is the best source of nutrition for [Music] fish so I'm hoping with this dneo culture I'll be able to give them more of that and do it more consistently and I just figured out how to get the algae pillows to stick to the side of the tank like this apparently the secret is to just dip them in a little bit of hot water first still kind of tricky I'm still getting the hang of it I have in the past fed them brine shrimp live brine shrimp which they do love they always go straight for it once it's dropped into the tank so I considered culturing brine shrimp even though I know my fish love them I'm not going to be able to keep a culture of brine shrimp long term they're actually kind of tricky to breed and to raise you I think that they have to be born into fresh water and then transition over to salt water which is what they need to survive I have only freshwater tanks so that's not really suitable for me but what might work well is this [Music] daphnia DNE are fully fresh water all they really need is a stable temperature around 68° and they're good to go as long as they have food to eat and I've already got a jar set up for them it's been cycling for a couple of weeks so let's check it out so this is a super simple setup uh very easy anybody can do it you could easily cop this at home here's a piece of choya wood I like choya wood because it has a little lot of little holes and nooks and crannies that the Daphne will be able to swim around in and burrow into to feel safe and to breed [Music] in I chose horn wart because it grows great just free floating just float to the top of the water doesn't need a substrate and this is going to be a glass bottom setup so we don't want plants that have roots or need a substrate on the surface we have some duckweed and frog bit the duckweed is especially good at growing quickly and sucking up a lot of excess nutrients which is a good thing because it prevents algae [Music] outbreaks and this big green Clump at the bottom of my jar is my Christmas Moss Christmas Moss is perfect for this type of setup because it has a huge amount of surface area and that means surface area for microorganisms to develop to spread to create a thriving ecosystem that the daphnia can feed off of these snails hitch a ride in the tank I'm guessing with the Christmas Moss they were probably hit it in there as tiny little babies or eggs cuz the jar was empty when I first set it up but little little by little I've had more and more creatures just popping up crawling along the glass life uh finds a way from what I've read daphnia breed best when the temperature is between 68 and 70° in their habitat so I'm going to go ahead and add a heater set to 68° to try to bump the temperature up a little bit before we add the [Music] daphnea this tank is going to be really useful as a source of live food for my community tank but I think it's also going to be really fun on its own just to watch it develop to watch all the different animals in it Thrive to watch the plants in it grow will new plants and animals [Music] appear [Music] I'll be giving the daphnia a little bit of food at the start but eventually they'll feed on the algae and the bacteria the microorganisms that grow within their habitat so it'll be completely self-sustaining hopefully Daphne make great live food for fish they're highly nutritional they're easily digestible for the fish they have a lot of protein and other essential nutrients that contribute to the overall health and growth of the [Music] fish life food is also really great because it stimulates their hunting instincts and it promotes natural feeding behaviors in the fish T-Rex doesn't want to be fat he wants to [Music] hunt [Music] the DNE need to acclimate to the temperature of the [Music] jar I'll float the cup inside the jar for half an hour to let the temperature [Music] adjust daffne and Mt just like shrimp so I'm hoping Hing that's what I'm seeing on the bottom of this [Music] cup time for them to explore their new [Music] home [Music] looks like the Daphne found the Christmas [Music] Moss so what I'm hoping to see over the next couple weeks as this jar evolves is that the daphnia population really takes [Music] off when it does I'll be able to start providing the daphnia to my community tank as a regular source of food be sure to subscribe if you want to follow the progress of this jar and if you want to see the first live feedings when the daphnia are [Music] ready [Music] thanks for watching guys and thanks for making it all the way to the end of the video I really appreciate [Music] it be sure to leave me a comment to let me know what you thought and I'll see you guys next time