Bought daphnia and a bunch of these were with them! My Betta has to work SO hard to hunt these down, they're an amazing enrichment for him. They often escape him and hide in the plants, which means he's then spending time exploring his tank and searching for more throughout the day.
I'd love to raise a bunch of these. I have some in a flower vase with tank water, and none have died so far. The water is absolutely FULL of babies…barely visible white specks, it looks like cloudy water until you watch closely and they move a bit.
I've been giving them a tiny bit of yeast in water, and as of a couple days ago some water that's had some cheapo spirulina tablets mixed into them.
I've been trying to find info on raising them but I'm only finding info for saltwater copepods, OR people asking how to get rid of freshwater ones in their tanks.
I have a few daphnia in their culture jar, should I take those out? The babies are SO tiny I'm worried the daphnia could eat them.
ANY info on raising these things would be highly appreciated, I am struggling to find anything. Experiences are appreciated as well! The more/faster I can raise them the better, the babies seem to be extremely slow growing though.
Also looking for ideas on how I can change the water in their vase without also sucking out a bunch of the babies, considering they're all throughout the water column and the size of a speck of dust.
Posted by PhotographyByAdri
2 Comments
Use google scholar and search for things like “method for cultivating fresh water copepods”
Basically you just need a bucket, sponge filter and a food source like rice bran.
Copepod naupoli are not super tiny. That haze of moving tiny creatures that you can barely make out sounds more like a protist culture, which is fine. The naupoli will probably feed on the protists.
I’ve had colonies of them in Daphnia tanks before, never did anything special to encourage them. They basically eat the same things from what I’ve read.