Vermicelli

[Vale!]

Twirl round a fork! ...

[Martinspuddle]

@Vale!, do you need worming?

[Vale!]

Thankfully, @Martinspuddle, excretion was not involved (at least not from my end!).


I'd intended to make this post in the not-too-distant ; however having seen that 'joke' this morning I couldn't resist bringing it forward.

[For fellow pedants : it was actually a rice noodle. They do occasionally get served pasta though, so I think I was justified in that bit of poetic licence!]


And for those who've no idea what's going on : these are the hair-thin worms 'Dero digitata' (aka Microfex).

I'd tried culturing them a couple of times over the last ten years or so but had failed miserably. The only source I knew of then was in America. Their price and that of their shipping was horrifying. Added to which a typical 'starter' culture consisted of a really tiny ball of worms which made those attempts very expensive luxuries in terms of cost-per-worm. But last year, looking for something else, I happened upon a much cheaper source in Europe, so a further attempt seemed economically more feasible.

While looking for a place in my PC to park the pic that I posted this morning I came upon one of the starter cultures (I ordered two) when they arrived from Denmark, sized very much like their American cousins :



I've had a lot more success with them this time around - and spectacularly more so since I introduced some of my Moina (they're like Daphnia but less crunchy!) in a co-culture.

My ambition at the beginning was to produce enough Deros to add occasionally to my fishes' menu roster. If successful in that I would then offer relatively generous starter cultures to any Forum Member(s) who wanted to have a go. These would be gratis with the only proviso that, should a Dero Disaster happen at Vale! Towers, there would be guaranteed reciprocity.

Anyway I appear to have reached both of those points!

PM if interested?

[fr499y]

Your fish are certainly living the gormet life!

[Martinspuddle]

Think mine get enough with Walter worms, Brine shrimp and live Daphnia plus frozen foods, thanks for though @Vale!


Click to enlarge

[plankton]

It's another interesting project by you (oh, nice to "see" you by the way ), I look forward to seeing how your fish enjoy them.

[FishBubs]

@Vale! hi vale, how to you keep your moina? Are you doin it in live green water culture or something else. I am interested in having a go at either daphnia or moina as you say they are less crunchy. I have to ask, how do you know they were crunchy

[Vale!]

Hi FB

Ha! That was just a way of saying that their carapace is thinner than that of Daphnia! When optimally-fed they're also more nutritious (to fish) than Daphnia and are smaller. They move the same, though, and trigger the hunting instinct in all the fish at Vale! Towers.

Please note that I'm not by any means an expert at culturing Moina and don't produce vast quantities of them - I just try to have enough so that I can occasionally include some in the rota of live foods available to my fishies.

The best food for Moina, as you correctly guess, is 'green' water but there are alternatives which will develop a culture. Over the course of (say) a week I use several alternatives in the hope that amongst them are nutrients roughly equivalent to that of green water. I don't know if that's the case but they grow and multiply so something useful must be happening! Cultures do have a habit of collapsing though (in fact I'm trying to recover from of those events right now!) so it's advisable to have more than one culture on the go to facilitate a re-start.

Moina cope with food that's around 2 microns in size, so really small. Single-celled algae are best, but even then two different types are needed for full nutrition. [I'm typing from memory here, btw, rather than attempting to search for my original notes & citations!].

A combination of Nannochloropsis and Chlorella will offer full nutrition. Both are rather expensively available as 'phytodisks', via zmsystems.co.uk . I buy their Nannochloropsis as 25ml concentrate, which can be frozen and can be used directly rather than one having to create a culture from it first :



They do Chlorella only in phytodisk form, though. Otherwise you can get small quantities of live Chlorella from companies that supply biological samples to schools - Blades Biological I think I've used before - that can then be cultured-on. Instead I drew some green water from one of my outside containers and then repeatedly subcultured it until I couldn't see anything that didn't seem Chlorella-like! That got put into maintained bottles that I kept in the greenhouse (inside in cold weather) and latterly in my polytunnel. Unfortunately we had very little sunshine over the Winter (it rained pretty much every day for at least six months) and the bottles' contents gradually faded. Perhaps this post will galvanise me into getting them up-and-running again at last! :



As far as algae are concerned I also use another product from ZM Systems :



It's good, although I do find dosage calculation difficult, especially indoors where I don't have snails in cultures. Too much, and very quickly indoor containers become infested with filamentous algae. So I use it mainly for Daphnia outside and quite sparingly indoors.


There are a lot of alternatives to single-celled algae (with the aforementioned disclaimer about nutrition!). Flour of various kinds have the requisite 2 micron-ish size ; wheat flour, gram flour etc. Mrs V! consumes industrial quantities of Thai broken rice and the 'milk' that's formed when it's washed has been a staple food for my Moina for years :



Yeasts grow naturally in the bottle, so that's double-bubble! But you can use baker's yeast from the shop :




Spirulina powder is also in the right size range :



And bacteria certainly are. I have a little tub of wheat kernels steeped in water (used for another purpose) that generates bacteria and I add drops of it every so often ...



I'm sure there's other stuff that can be used but the above's what they get hereabouts!


To cheekily anticipate one of your next potential questions ...

It's possible to buy Moina via ebay in the form of cysts which you then rehydrate and culture-on. They may well be seasonally available because the last time I looked for someone all the suppliers were out of stock. But it's better and more reliable (IME and if you can find them!) to start off with adults. There's a UK seller (sskaquatics; search 'Moina macrocopa') on ebay that has some at the moment - £8 for a 300ml bag.

Hope that helps.

[FishBubs]

It does help indeed and appreciate you answering my question before i asked it
I researched it a little cos i want to have a go. I was aware of the yeast but i am concerned it will foul the water and thought live algae (green water) would be safer.

[FishBubs]

Another question Vale! What do you keep your moina in ?