Just a couple quick notes - I noticed at one point I mentioned non-annual killifish when I was actually talking about annual killis (oops). And I said I used activated yeast for the worm food. It's actually *nutritional* yeast flakes. Also - you let me go through this whole interview with mascara smeared on my eyelid. 🤦♀ Excellent video, Sean. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share my knowledge with everyone. 💜
So activated and deactivated yeast doesn't matter? Also, I don't have a great person like you around so I had to get daphnia by eggs, do you know how long they take to hatch, it's been a couple of days and I've seen nothing yet?
@@magnusjohansson5841 Correct, it does not matter. Nutritional yeast flakes are something different than regular yeast. As far as the eggs - it can take up to a month or so for the eggs to hatch sometimes. If you have Daphnia pulex eggs, keep in mind that the babies are going to be exceptionally small and you may not be able to see them at first
What is that smallest type of daphnia? I culture the red russian's outdoors in Middle TN year round. I seem to always loose the monia(smallest I knew about) during winter months. I would love to get your contact info but not doing that through youtube. I am getting back into killies as soon as I can. I will say I like to keep cherry shrimp with daphnia cultures but not set one up like that since I was able to keep fish again(just started back about 1.5 years ago). White worms can tolerate temps upto low 70s but do prefer to be kept cooler. I used to keep my culture sitting on the AC vent during the summer. I really want to get some Notho. killies as I loved the annuals.
@@johncox8882 It looks like my first reply didn't go through so I'll try again 😁. The smallest Daphnia are Daphnia ambigua. Certain types of Ceriodaphnia and Moina can be smaller than that. Cherry Shrimp and daphnia go together like peas and carrots. The shrimp will eat any of the leftover food that the daphnia leave behind. While white worms can tolerate higher temperatures, their reproduction starts to slow down at about 68 degrees and will stop entirely at about 75. Higher than that and they will start to die off completely. If you look very closely at 3:28 you'll be able to see the reflection of one of my Nothobranchius rachovii 'Beira 98'. I'm just now getting into South American Annuals, and I absolutely adore them
If you EVER make new content I want to see it. What you are doing is one of my goals. I keep mosquito traps and green water but have not found a source for vinegar eels and black worms. I want to keep annual killis, but my culture keeping isn't there yet. I keep cpds which I've spawned, and double sword guppies, among other fish. Thanks for your data, this is a rare day for me. I usually don't get this much information about exactly what I'm trying to do.
What a one in a million cool lady with awesome interests. There are so few people that seem to be interested in much of anything these days. Rare to find someone like that.
@@CassiesCrittersAndCreations I was half expecting you to grab a microscope! I'm actually going to have to clean out my garage, I have one in a box somewhere. Would love the link to your fish club presentation of live food, I didn't see it. This was fantastic, thanks!
@@GROCK619 I'm actually still rebuilding after losing all my tanks and fish when Covid hit. Once I have things in full production, I'd love to do another video on my killis. That's going to take another 6-8 months at least
Very cool video. Love seeing all the info about live foods. There is a strain of tropical white worms out there that doesn't need refrigeration. I keep my cultures at 75-80 and they breed super fast!
I'd definitely be up for a live stream! I'll also be keeping an eye on the comments here for a little while, so feel free to ask anything you'd like to know 💜
That was the name the adoption agency gave him. I've played the Zelda series since it first came out on NES, so I thought it was great. He's also very curious and constantly going on his own little adventures. 😊 It's dangerous to go alone, take this **hands you a cat**
What a great video Sean. Thanks to Cassandra for sharing her wisdom with us. The one question I did not hear asked was how many fish is she feeding? That is enough food for hundreds if not thousands of fish.
I currently have somewhere around 50 fish. Most of them are fry. I intend to keep the variety of foods, but I deliberately ramped up the amounts of food I'm producing so that I can give away free cultures to members of our local fish club.
@@SequoiaElisabeth Our local club does not currently allow sales except at our biannual swaps. I'm happy to give them away to our members though. Since everything is already being kept, it really only costs me a few extra dollars a month to be able to provide foods for everyone.
👍😎 Good one Sean. Very helpful info for someone wanting to do live food culture’s. In the opening, I was hoping you might see Charlie hitch hiking and pick him up. 🖖
As far as your makeup, some of us not care what you look like , just how you present the subject. No offence in tended. And that was great. More Please
This was amazing! I'm still reeling from the information overload...i will definitely be giving this a re-watch! I has no idea you could culuture brine shrimp outdoors in winter....though i imagine new england winters are a bit different 😅 Cassandra is a brilliant lady and she has earned you another new subscriber today! Thank you for doing this video
Thank you! Sean did a great job with this video. Bryan Nelson is the man who brought outdoor brine shrimp to my attention, and he lives in New Hampshire! I think you should give it a shot.
@@CassiesCrittersAndCreations oh wow I didn't know you had another channel...subbed! Thank you for the inspiration! I'm a little limited on space for tubs but maybe I will get a lil 5 gal bucket going with some brine shrimp and see how it goes I have to find a way to be able to start a variety of food culture tanks without incurring the wifely wrath...i'm already walking a thin line as it is 😂😂😂
There are actually over **200** species of daphnia! The most popular ones in the aquarium hobby are Daphnia magna (large) and Daphnia pulex (small). I only recently discovered the ceriodaphnia which are even smaller than Daphnia pulex or even Moina. Baby ceriodaphnia are smaller than baby brine shrimp, making them an ideal food for the tiniest of fry. I'm glad you enjoyed the video! 💜
Keeping three different kinds of live foods is definitely ahead of the curve for the average hobbyist! This variety was only made possible with the accumulation of decades of knowledge passed down to me by scientists and hobbyists who have been doing this for over half a century, as well as some very generous donations from Conservation Fisheries - a non-profit organization based in Knoxville, TN dedicated to preserving aquatic biodiversity.
Thanks for a very interesting video. And thank you Cassandra for sharing your knowledge. This is something I've been wanting to get into for quite awhile.
Go for it! The trick with daphnia is to learn their BOOM CRASH cycle. I always recommend keeping at least 2 containers for this reason. When you take good care of daphnia, the population tends to explode and you'll have hundreds...for a few days. Then it will crash and you'll be lucky if a few babies survive. You can avoid this by harvesting heavily during the BOOM cycle, but having a backup culture makes it easy to recover if it ever crashes. I'm glad you enjoyed the video 💜
Great video. Not just great, fantastic. Very informative. Thank you Sean, Thank you Cassandra. You need to make another one with Cassandra showing her killifish and maybe how she breeds them and raises them and even feeds them. Show the colors. There is very little on UA-cam about killifish. I have had a daphnia culture going for about a year now. It was either a 500 count or 1000 count that I bought off of Amazon. I keep them in a 10 or 15 gallon tote that I bought from Menard's. I have an air hose without airstone and an Aqueon l.e.d. clip on nano tank light going 24/7. I top off with distilled water after evaporation. I feed sometimes dried yeast, sometimes dried pea powder, sometimes brown rice flower, sometimes dried spirolina powder. So far no crashes. I would love to hear Cassandra's thoughts about this setup.
It sounds like you're doing great with your daphnia setup! I can offer you two bits of information, but if you've kept them successfully for a year you might not want to change things very much so take this with a grain of salt. Don't "fix" what isn't broken. Daphnia are crustaceans and do require some hardness in the water to form their carapace. Distilled water doesn't have this hardness. Studies have shown that, when compared to yeast and spirulina, daphnia do best with chlorella powder. Yeast is not an ideal food for them, but it does work. I cannot speak to pea powder or rice flour, but I know people who have had good success with these foods. Spirulina powder also does very well in my experience. I'm glad you enjoyed the video 😊
Thank you for your feedback Cassandra. I too like killifish. It would be great if you and Sean made a followup video showcasing your killifish collection.
Great video! Cassandra is amazing and has raised the bar in my hobby. I am extremely thankful to have met her and for all of her generosity. Great person in the hobby! You too Sean! Great content. Now we need to see you keeping live foods. 😃
@CassiesCrittersAndCreations fantastic information. How did you get your initial cultures? Do you worry about mosquitos? (I say this because I got bit six months ago and scratched it, it turned into a staph infection, now I'm super worried!). And I notice you have a significant quantity of media, in the house, how do you deal with the odor? That was the worst thing about microbiology lab...
@@simonebalkenhol1206 My cultures came from a local fish conversation group called Conversation Fisheries in Knoxville, and from a Killifish breeder who goes by the handle FishGuysPlace. I use mosquito dunks for the cultures I don't want mosquitos in. The one thing I do have to worry about is fruit fly invasion. Because of this, I have to keep ventilation to a minimum, so the cultures only smell when they're opened lol
I keep a few cultures, nowhere near as many as Cassandra and I have to agree with her 100%, if you feed live food it is far more natural and most fish will thrive rather than survive. I find so many people are reluctant to grow their own because they think it's difficult or time consuming. Vinegar eels really take care of themselves, just get a culture, put it in a bottle with a 50/50 mix of apple vinegar and water and leave it alone. 3 months later they are doing just fine, a life saver (literally) when you get that unexpected spawn and need to feed tiny fry.
That's definitely the best part of vinegar eels! I'll share a little secret with you that I didn't get to mention in the video - if you let a microworm culture dry out, you can store the dried chunks in the fridge. They'll keep for at least a few months or more, and when you need them you can just add water back to them and the culture will spring back to life. Another perfect food for those unexpected spawns!
@@user-hl3ly4sb4t Gosh, I had no idea about drying microworm cultures. I prefer to keep 3 or 4 on the go and just bin the old one when it starts to crash and seed a new one from one of the viable cultures. I used to keep grindal worms which I think are probably the most productive but I just couldn't stop the mites getting in.
@@andystokes8702 Mites in grindal worm cultures usually come from the food they're given. This will happen very easily if you feed the cultures dry cat or dog food. If you want to get rid of the mites you can drop a bunch of grindal worms into a container of water. The worms will sink to the bottom, but the mites will float. You can just pour them off, and restart the culture with the grindal worms that sank down. I actually like to keep springtails with my grindal worms. I've found they will usually out compete the spider mites, and they make great food for fry
Hi…first and foremost, thank you for sharing this tour and thanks to Cassandra for sharing her experiences and wisdom with live food cultures!! I have a couple of cultures…daphnia magna and black worms. But I have had difficulty maintaining the daphnia for more than a couple of months. Much of the information online tells you to supply and airline with slow trickle of large bubbles and a light source and to feed yeast and various of other foods. I noticed Cassandra used leaves…is that the only food, if not, what do you feed? And do you think the air and light is necessary. I would like to create a more natural habitat for the daphnia to thrive…but inside instead of outdoors… Lastly, what kind of water do you use? I use dechlorinated tap water, but I recently heard on another video that daphnia do not like dechlorinated water… The daphnia cultures I have had populate great for about month or two, then die off…😞 I’m just trying to figure out why…THANKS again!!!
Daphnia will generally do best when fed chlorella algae, which you can buy online or at health food stores in powdered form. They also like spirulina powder which is a saltwater algae. While yeast is an acceptable food, they generally will not do well if that's all they're given. The leaf litter will provide an adequate food supply for them as well. The trick with daphnia is to learn their cycle. The cultures go through phases where they will BOOM and give great production for a few weeks, and then CRASH down to nothing or just babies if you're lucky. This generally happens due to overcrowding. While the population is going strong you just harvest heavily to avoid the crash. An airline helps oxygenate the water, and you will be able to maintain a more dense culture for a longer period of time if you have one. Light is not strictly necessary, but a strong light will encourage algae to grow which is free food. Daphnia are extremely sensitive to any kind of water toxicity. They absolutely will not tolerate any chlorine or chloramines. The problem with dechlorinator is most of the commercially available ones contain chemicals designed to prolong their shelf life. Daphnia will not tolerate these stabilizing chemicals. When I change their water, I'll siphon water from one of my fish tanks and use that. This way the dechlorinator has already run its course.
@@user-hl3ly4sb4t THANKS so much for your prompt reply! ☺️ I have several planted aquarium tanks and bowls…and considered using some of the water from those…but during my online research, I read that you have to be careful that your aquarium water doesn’t have hydra, because it will kill the daphnia. I don’t think aquariums have hydra, but I am not sure and therefore I was afraid to use it. But at this point it’s worth a try…🤞🏽🤞🏽🤞🏽And I was feeding my daphnia culture the spirulina powder, but I will try the chlorella algae powder instead. I am also researching how to culture green water. I have purchased bottles of it on EBay and the daphnia seemed to LOVE it…and that’s when they were really thriving and their reproduction was the most prolific. But it runs out quickly and so it can become expensive to keep it in stock. Also, what about bladder or Ramshorn snails…are they safe to culture with the daphnia? Thanks again!! 🙏🏽🥰
@@lmathews61 Hydra will kill daphnia. They can be present in aquariums, and often arrive as hitchhikers on plants. They are visible if you look closely, so if you have them you'll know. You don't need to go out of your way to buy green water. That's actually what chlorella is. Snails co-culture well with daphnia, eating the leftover food and algae that forms on the surfaces of the container. I have ramshorns in almost all of mine
The easiest way is to keep a container of water outside in a shaded area where it can collect rainwater, and keep it full of oak leaves. This won't give you the largest yield, but it's almost foolproof as far as sustainability
learned : * you do more water changes in your daphnia cultured water : 50 % a week is a lot but I'm taking the info in :). * alternative method for cultivating vinegar eels : interesting !!! * your proposed alternative / last method for feeding grindal and white worms. My first grindal culture crashed : interesting !!! questions : * what about culturing outside and dealing with dragonfly larvae. I harvest daphnia from outside and once found a big dragonfly between my plants inside an aquarium that came with the daphnia when still very small... It grew between the plants, and probably killed a lot of fry... * I use a lot of artemia. You don't talk about this food (reason why she does not us it ?). * Does she, besides organic waste, feed the daphnia with some extra's ? (algae water, yeast,...) ? * missing : her experience on culturing infusoria. My efforts (still learning) were not succesfull for a reason. I think dried banana leaves will maybe give me better results. suggestion : * increasing to culture mosquito larvea. Take a little bucket with some apples in it (sweet water). Mosquito will lay rafts on watersurface. Collect raft and put them in aged water with organics. it will give you 1000's of mosquito larvae. * I think I saw a cyclops as well in a daphnia tank. You can experiment culturing them as well. I 100 % agree with the oatmeal method with yeast for banana and microworms. It's just the best way to do it. Crushed bread is just not that good. I find that on fresh oatmeal substrates, yeast is even not necessary... But yes it helps to regulate things. And indeed : seed shrimp can be a pain in the a..... in a lot of tanks. A lot of fish won't eat them, and the seed shrimp culture is almost impossible to kill in another way then putting a fish in it that eats them. So be carefull introducing seed shrimp in a tank.
The person I got my daphnia from actually does a 50% water change twice a week for his cultures! I have never seen dragonfly larvae in any of my cultures. When I harvest from any of my cultures, even in the indoor ones, I always inspect them very carefully before feeding them. The only "invaders" I've had to deal with are mosquito larvae, bloodworms, seed shrimp, and tadpoles. I don't raise artemia because I have no reason to, and I don't want to deal with the extra effort. I only keep freshwater tanks, and I don't want to bother with saltwater just for a live food culture when my banana worms and ceriodaphnia are smaller than BBS and just as nutritious. There's also the pain of constantly buying eggs if you don't have a permanent setup, or dealing with salt buildup in containers. Too much hassle for me, personally. If you keep saltwater tanks, it would probably be trivial to set up a brine shrimp tank and culture them in a similar way to daphnia. It's just not for me. You might have noticed I have two tanks inside with daphnia and no organic waste. I feed these cultures chlorella powder daily or every other day depending on how fast they clear the tank. Yeast is not an optimal food for daphnia. They do better on spirulina or chlorella. In the outdoor cultures, I also use a small amount of Black Kow. They love it! I don't culture infusoria because it's unnecessary. Chlorella (freshwater single cell algae) is smaller than infusoria at 2-10µ, compared to infusoria at 25-300µ. Juvenile banana worms are smaller than 1µ and the adults grow up to 40µ in diameter. I also keep a small amount of prepared food which is 5-200µ. This makes it unnecessary to culture infusoria. The outdoor tub you see at 9:08 has thousands of mosquito larvae in it. More than I could ever feed. I've actually started freezing them in ice cube trays because there are just so many. One dip with my net into this container is more than all of my fish put together will eat in a day. Your apple method sounds like it would work great. If you want to try a supercharged method - mosquito larvae will do best when fed E. Coli bacteria, which you can get from dried manure like Black Kow. I do co-culture daphnia with copepods. It's an easy, no effort method to keep them going at the same time. I don't even think about it. They also do very well in my scud containers. It seems like the key with them is organic waste. Their population explodes when there's lots of "stuff" in the container. Thank you for the comments, questions, and suggestions! I'm glad you found some of this information helpful.
I see you have the Third Edition of Diane’s Walstad book of the planted aquarium. I believe every serious aquarist should have her book to read and study. I raised Daphnia, Brine Shrimps , and other small live foods off and on. I enjoy watching your videos. Thank you for sharing.
It's really an excellent book. There's so much great information in there, and I love that she keeps doing revisions to it and posting them on her site. Glad you enjoyed the video!
Please ask this lady how she manages to keep things out of her cultures like dragonfly larvae which are they themselves predators that can take small fish
I've never seen dragonfly larvae in any of my cultures. I guess I've just been lucky so far. They would be relatively easy to spot when you're harvesting though. -This Lady
Wow impressive wish I could keep cultures like that mine tend to crash Seeing this video makes me want to try again with a few cultures like Daphnia, Scuds or some of the worms.
If you need a little help with success, I did a lecture on live foods for the East Tennessee Aquatic Association where I give tips on simple setups for success. They won't give you the highest yield, but they should be easier techniques for most people
I have kept killifish without feeding the fry live micro foods. I hatch mine in methylene blue water and they eat the micros in there for a week before I take them out into a bigger tank. Crushed flakes or micron ir any fry dried foods will do. They may not grow as fast, but will eventually get to size. Don't get me wrong, I still grow live foods. I just don't use it as much as I would like.
There is always a worry with an outdoor culture that it might get invaded by dragonfly nymphs, mosquitos, or frog eggs. These are quite common where I live. Indoor cultures can get infested with mites and fruit flies. The key is to check your food after harvesting to ensure you don't introduce anything bad into your tank, and restart your cultures as necessary if they get overwhelmed.
Oh I didnt know it was so easy to produce daphnia by just throwing in some rotting leaves. I'm going to try. I wonder if some leaves are toxic to the daphnia or the fish being fed daphnia that had eaten them? Should the leaves be thin textured or just any thickness? I live in the tropics so we have many different tree species in the forest. Do they mind tanins and do you have to add calcium chloride? Very informative video thankyou. I'm always looking for live foods, they do make fish so much more active, alive and bright. Should the dapnia and leaves have sunshine or not. I would have to use a mosquito net cover or we would be eaten alive. I used to breed Daphnia by the ton to feed goldfish fry but it was messy and smelly making green water and they would always be crashing as the sheer numbers produced this way are hard to keep going in a smooth linear continuous way.
You can use just about any leaves, but stay away from coniferous trees and needles like pine, cedar, fir, etc. Daphnia don't care about tannins, but they do prefer to be in the shade. I use mosquito dunks to prevent mosquitos from breeding
I'm interested in buying some starter cultures , does Cassandra sell them , if so does she have some way of contacting her , except twitter I'm not allowed on twitter ever again apparently.....
Live food is always superior to living beings. We can survive on protein bars, key word being survive. Animals and plants are living and that's what we should eat. Why would you give your animals protein bars to exist on. Life requires life
Just a couple quick notes - I noticed at one point I mentioned non-annual killifish when I was actually talking about annual killis (oops). And I said I used activated yeast for the worm food. It's actually *nutritional* yeast flakes. Also - you let me go through this whole interview with mascara smeared on my eyelid. 🤦♀ Excellent video, Sean. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share my knowledge with everyone. 💜
So activated and deactivated yeast doesn't matter? Also, I don't have a great person like you around so I had to get daphnia by eggs, do you know how long they take to hatch, it's been a couple of days and I've seen nothing yet?
@@magnusjohansson5841 Correct, it does not matter. Nutritional yeast flakes are something different than regular yeast. As far as the eggs - it can take up to a month or so for the eggs to hatch sometimes. If you have Daphnia pulex eggs, keep in mind that the babies are going to be exceptionally small and you may not be able to see them at first
What is that smallest type of daphnia? I culture the red russian's outdoors in Middle TN year round. I seem to always loose the monia(smallest I knew about) during winter months. I would love to get your contact info but not doing that through youtube. I am getting back into killies as soon as I can. I will say I like to keep cherry shrimp with daphnia cultures but not set one up like that since I was able to keep fish again(just started back about 1.5 years ago). White worms can tolerate temps upto low 70s but do prefer to be kept cooler. I used to keep my culture sitting on the AC vent during the summer. I really want to get some Notho. killies as I loved the annuals.
@@johncox8882 It looks like my first reply didn't go through so I'll try again 😁. The smallest Daphnia are Daphnia ambigua. Certain types of Ceriodaphnia and Moina can be smaller than that. Cherry Shrimp and daphnia go together like peas and carrots. The shrimp will eat any of the leftover food that the daphnia leave behind. While white worms can tolerate higher temperatures, their reproduction starts to slow down at about 68 degrees and will stop entirely at about 75. Higher than that and they will start to die off completely. If you look very closely at 3:28 you'll be able to see the reflection of one of my Nothobranchius rachovii 'Beira 98'. I'm just now getting into South American Annuals, and I absolutely adore them
If you EVER make new content I want to see it. What you are doing is one of my goals. I keep mosquito traps and green water but have not found a source for vinegar eels and black worms. I want to keep annual killis, but my culture keeping isn't there yet. I keep cpds which I've spawned, and double sword guppies, among other fish.
Thanks for your data, this is a rare day for me. I usually don't get this much information about exactly what I'm trying to do.
Wow, just wow. THE most informative and interesting YT video I have ever watched. Such lovely people too. A pleasure to listen to.
Glad you enjoyed it!
What a one in a million cool lady with awesome interests. There are so few people that seem to be interested in much of anything these days. Rare to find someone like that.
Thank you!
Her understanding of live food is beyond impressive
Thank you very much!
@@CassiesCrittersAndCreations I was half expecting you to grab a microscope! I'm actually going to have to clean out my garage, I have one in a box somewhere. Would love the link to your fish club presentation of live food, I didn't see it. This was fantastic, thanks!
@@simonebalkenhol1206 I'd love to have a microscope! The other presentation is available on my site and the ETAA channel
Man this was a great video how did it take me so long to finally get around to watching it?
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
It was really nice of her to share her knowledge and experience with you and us viewers too!
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Thank You. This is a really really good video. Cassandra is wonderful , interesting and fabulous. Top 10 video.
Aw, so sweet. Thank you!
Very eductional - thankyou!
You're welcome!
Wow ! She has a Ton of Knowledge !! Nice work y'all 👍
Maybe next time we can see her fish
@@GROCK619 I'm actually still rebuilding after losing all my tanks and fish when Covid hit. Once I have things in full production, I'd love to do another video on my killis. That's going to take another 6-8 months at least
Wow! Great video, full of interesting information. I will be trying live foods after seeing this. Thanks!
Awesome
Definitely a hobby within a hobby!
This is one fo the coolest things I have seen!
Thanks!
To answer your question, Yes, I love these videos where you visit and interview hobbyists in the field. Not so much the talking head videos though.
Really informative!
Very interesseting video. Thank you Pecktec and Cassandra. 😊
Very cool video. Love seeing all the info about live foods.
There is a strain of tropical white worms out there that doesn't need refrigeration. I keep my cultures at 75-80 and they breed super fast!
Want to trade? 😁
@@user-hl3ly4sb4t I actually would be interested in trading for some grindal worms!
@@TheTrueMitch UA-cam really hates people getting in touch with each other apparently. Use the link in the description to find me
I appreciate the time you spent finding that information for hobbyist.
Thank you for doing this vid, Sean. Cassandra is awesome. Love her insight and knowledge and willingness to share.
Thanks, Dave!
Maybe best video yet great job.would love if you did a live stream with her so we could ask questions.will definitely be rewatching this one
I'd definitely be up for a live stream! I'll also be keeping an eye on the comments here for a little while, so feel free to ask anything you'd like to know 💜
Awesome! Thanks for sharing 🇦🇺❤️
Great video. Thumbs up cuz you named your cat Link. 👍
That was the name the adoption agency gave him. I've played the Zelda series since it first came out on NES, so I thought it was great. He's also very curious and constantly going on his own little adventures. 😊 It's dangerous to go alone, take this **hands you a cat**
Great video and very interesting
What a great video Sean. Thanks to Cassandra for sharing her wisdom with us. The one question I did not hear asked was how many fish is she feeding? That is enough food for hundreds if not thousands of fish.
I currently have somewhere around 50 fish. Most of them are fry. I intend to keep the variety of foods, but I deliberately ramped up the amounts of food I'm producing so that I can give away free cultures to members of our local fish club.
@@user-hl3ly4sb4t Most generous indeed! Here in CO our members sell them at our monthly auctions and biannual auctions.
@@SequoiaElisabeth Our local club does not currently allow sales except at our biannual swaps. I'm happy to give them away to our members though. Since everything is already being kept, it really only costs me a few extra dollars a month to be able to provide foods for everyone.
Fascinating stuff. I want to try vinegar eels someday!
They're super easy! You totally should
👍😎 Good one Sean. Very helpful info for someone wanting to do live food culture’s. In the opening, I was hoping you might see Charlie hitch hiking and pick him up. 🖖
Wow..very natural food…thx for sharing 👍
That was very informative awesome content.
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
This was incredible. I would love to see her fish sometime as well.
We love cats too!
I didn't realize until I watched the video that my other cat, Minou, also makes an appearance at 28:58 😁
As far as your makeup, some of us not care what you look like , just how you present the subject. No offence in tended. And that was great. More Please
Thank you!
This was amazing! I'm still reeling from the information overload...i will definitely be giving this a re-watch! I has no idea you could culuture brine shrimp outdoors in winter....though i imagine new england winters are a bit different 😅 Cassandra is a brilliant lady and she has earned you another new subscriber today! Thank you for doing this video
Thank you! Sean did a great job with this video. Bryan Nelson is the man who brought outdoor brine shrimp to my attention, and he lives in New Hampshire! I think you should give it a shot.
@@CassiesCrittersAndCreations oh wow I didn't know you had another channel...subbed! Thank you for the inspiration! I'm a little limited on space for tubs but maybe I will get a lil 5 gal bucket going with some brine shrimp and see how it goes
I have to find a way to be able to start a variety of food culture tanks without incurring the wifely wrath...i'm already walking a thin line as it is 😂😂😂
@@evergreenpsyche You're welcome! Good luck with the wife 😁😁
I didn't know there was such a large variety of foods. Even more than one type of daphnea. I guess stands to reason. Thank you for the video
There are actually over **200** species of daphnia! The most popular ones in the aquarium hobby are Daphnia magna (large) and Daphnia pulex (small). I only recently discovered the ceriodaphnia which are even smaller than Daphnia pulex or even Moina. Baby ceriodaphnia are smaller than baby brine shrimp, making them an ideal food for the tiniest of fry. I'm glad you enjoyed the video! 💜
Excellent video!
Mind Blowing
Thank you!
That's a great variety! I thought I was ahead of the curve with daphnia, scuds and baby brine but this raised the bar!
Keeping three different kinds of live foods is definitely ahead of the curve for the average hobbyist! This variety was only made possible with the accumulation of decades of knowledge passed down to me by scientists and hobbyists who have been doing this for over half a century, as well as some very generous donations from Conservation Fisheries - a non-profit organization based in Knoxville, TN dedicated to preserving aquatic biodiversity.
Thanks for a very interesting video. And thank you Cassandra for sharing your knowledge. This is something I've been wanting to get into for quite awhile.
You're welcome!
Great video! Makes me want to try daphnia again
Go for it! The trick with daphnia is to learn their BOOM CRASH cycle. I always recommend keeping at least 2 containers for this reason. When you take good care of daphnia, the population tends to explode and you'll have hundreds...for a few days. Then it will crash and you'll be lucky if a few babies survive. You can avoid this by harvesting heavily during the BOOM cycle, but having a backup culture makes it easy to recover if it ever crashes. I'm glad you enjoyed the video 💜
This is one of the very few realy useful and informative YT videos about growing live food for fish
Thanks so much!
Thank you! I'm so glad you were able to get something out of it!
Wow! I never knew there were so many types of daphnia, had never heard of banana worms, so much information I picked up this evening.
👍❤👍
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Great video my friend, perfect timing as well I’m in process of culturing both daphnia and scuds. Thank you so much sir🙂👍🏻
Great video. Not just great, fantastic. Very informative. Thank you Sean, Thank you Cassandra. You need to make another one with Cassandra showing her killifish and maybe how she breeds them and raises them and even feeds them. Show the colors. There is very little on UA-cam about killifish. I have had a daphnia culture going for about a year now. It was either a 500 count or 1000 count that I bought off of Amazon. I keep them in a 10 or 15 gallon tote that I bought from Menard's. I have an air hose without airstone and an Aqueon l.e.d. clip on nano tank light going 24/7. I top off with distilled water after evaporation. I feed sometimes dried yeast, sometimes dried pea powder, sometimes brown rice flower, sometimes dried spirolina powder. So far no crashes. I would love to hear Cassandra's thoughts about this setup.
It sounds like you're doing great with your daphnia setup! I can offer you two bits of information, but if you've kept them successfully for a year you might not want to change things very much so take this with a grain of salt. Don't "fix" what isn't broken. Daphnia are crustaceans and do require some hardness in the water to form their carapace. Distilled water doesn't have this hardness. Studies have shown that, when compared to yeast and spirulina, daphnia do best with chlorella powder. Yeast is not an ideal food for them, but it does work. I cannot speak to pea powder or rice flour, but I know people who have had good success with these foods. Spirulina powder also does very well in my experience. I'm glad you enjoyed the video 😊
Thank you for your feedback Cassandra. I too like killifish. It would be great if you and Sean made a followup video showcasing your killifish collection.
@@rodneywalat8956 I'm all for it! Good luck to you, your fishes, and your daphnia!
outstanding
Thanks Cassandra! Great interview, I learned a lot. Now I think I’ll try culturing some live foods for my Apistos & German Rams.
You're welcome! I'm glad I could help inspire you
Very cool. I enjoyed seeing all the different options.
Excellent video.
Stumbled across this video searching for live fish foods. Thank you Sir for sharing. Great video.👍👍
Cool interview. Very interesting.
Great video! Cassandra is amazing and has raised the bar in my hobby. I am extremely thankful to have met her and for all of her generosity. Great person in the hobby!
You too Sean! Great content. Now we need to see you keeping live foods. 😃
This is so informative!!! Fantastic reporting!🌻🌼🐝
@@PotooBurd I'm glad you enjoyed it!
@CassiesCrittersAndCreations fantastic information. How did you get your initial cultures? Do you worry about mosquitos? (I say this because I got bit six months ago and scratched it, it turned into a staph infection, now I'm super worried!). And I notice you have a significant quantity of media, in the house, how do you deal with the odor? That was the worst thing about microbiology lab...
@@simonebalkenhol1206 My cultures came from a local fish conversation group called Conversation Fisheries in Knoxville, and from a Killifish breeder who goes by the handle FishGuysPlace. I use mosquito dunks for the cultures I don't want mosquitos in. The one thing I do have to worry about is fruit fly invasion. Because of this, I have to keep ventilation to a minimum, so the cultures only smell when they're opened lol
Absolutely fascinating! A completely self-sufficient feeding system. Great video!
Well, I don't have to leave the house much for it but it takes some work to maintain all these 😁
Dude this lady is awesome
Thanks!
Love seeing you reach out to the locals! very informational video and an awesome setup 👏 👌
My setup is humbled by yours. Maybe one day you can come check things out and give me some tips on how to improve
I keep a few cultures, nowhere near as many as Cassandra and I have to agree with her 100%, if you feed live food it is far more natural and most fish will thrive rather than survive. I find so many people are reluctant to grow their own because they think it's difficult or time consuming. Vinegar eels really take care of themselves, just get a culture, put it in a bottle with a 50/50 mix of apple vinegar and water and leave it alone. 3 months later they are doing just fine, a life saver (literally) when you get that unexpected spawn and need to feed tiny fry.
That's definitely the best part of vinegar eels! I'll share a little secret with you that I didn't get to mention in the video - if you let a microworm culture dry out, you can store the dried chunks in the fridge. They'll keep for at least a few months or more, and when you need them you can just add water back to them and the culture will spring back to life. Another perfect food for those unexpected spawns!
@@user-hl3ly4sb4t Gosh, I had no idea about drying microworm cultures. I prefer to keep 3 or 4 on the go and just bin the old one when it starts to crash and seed a new one from one of the viable cultures. I used to keep grindal worms which I think are probably the most productive but I just couldn't stop the mites getting in.
@@andystokes8702 Mites in grindal worm cultures usually come from the food they're given. This will happen very easily if you feed the cultures dry cat or dog food. If you want to get rid of the mites you can drop a bunch of grindal worms into a container of water. The worms will sink to the bottom, but the mites will float. You can just pour them off, and restart the culture with the grindal worms that sank down. I actually like to keep springtails with my grindal worms. I've found they will usually out compete the spider mites, and they make great food for fry
Awesome video man
Interesting. Makes me want to try love foods. Thanks
Hi…first and foremost, thank you for sharing this tour and thanks to Cassandra for sharing her experiences and wisdom with live food cultures!!
I have a couple of cultures…daphnia magna and black worms. But I have had difficulty maintaining the daphnia for more than a couple of months. Much of the information online tells you to supply and airline with slow trickle of large bubbles and a light source and to feed yeast and various of other foods. I noticed Cassandra used leaves…is that the only food, if not, what do you feed? And do you think the air and light is necessary. I would like to create a more natural habitat for the daphnia to thrive…but inside instead of outdoors…
Lastly, what kind of water do you use? I use dechlorinated tap water, but I recently heard on another video that daphnia do not like dechlorinated water…
The daphnia cultures I have had populate great for about month or two, then die off…😞 I’m just trying to figure out why…THANKS again!!!
Daphnia will generally do best when fed chlorella algae, which you can buy online or at health food stores in powdered form. They also like spirulina powder which is a saltwater algae. While yeast is an acceptable food, they generally will not do well if that's all they're given. The leaf litter will provide an adequate food supply for them as well. The trick with daphnia is to learn their cycle. The cultures go through phases where they will BOOM and give great production for a few weeks, and then CRASH down to nothing or just babies if you're lucky. This generally happens due to overcrowding. While the population is going strong you just harvest heavily to avoid the crash. An airline helps oxygenate the water, and you will be able to maintain a more dense culture for a longer period of time if you have one. Light is not strictly necessary, but a strong light will encourage algae to grow which is free food.
Daphnia are extremely sensitive to any kind of water toxicity. They absolutely will not tolerate any chlorine or chloramines. The problem with dechlorinator is most of the commercially available ones contain chemicals designed to prolong their shelf life. Daphnia will not tolerate these stabilizing chemicals. When I change their water, I'll siphon water from one of my fish tanks and use that. This way the dechlorinator has already run its course.
@@user-hl3ly4sb4t THANKS so much for your prompt reply! ☺️
I have several planted aquarium tanks and bowls…and considered using some of the water from those…but during my online research, I read that you have to be careful that your aquarium water doesn’t have hydra, because it will kill the daphnia. I don’t think aquariums have hydra, but I am not sure and therefore I was afraid to use it. But at this point it’s worth a try…🤞🏽🤞🏽🤞🏽And I was feeding my daphnia culture the spirulina powder, but I will try the chlorella algae powder instead. I am also researching how to culture green water. I have purchased bottles of it on EBay and the daphnia seemed to LOVE it…and that’s when they were really thriving and their reproduction was the most prolific. But it runs out quickly and so it can become expensive to keep it in stock.
Also, what about bladder or Ramshorn snails…are they safe to culture with the daphnia?
Thanks again!! 🙏🏽🥰
@@lmathews61 Hydra will kill daphnia. They can be present in aquariums, and often arrive as hitchhikers on plants. They are visible if you look closely, so if you have them you'll know. You don't need to go out of your way to buy green water. That's actually what chlorella is.
Snails co-culture well with daphnia, eating the leftover food and algae that forms on the surfaces of the container. I have ramshorns in almost all of mine
@@user-hl3ly4sb4t Excellent…thanks again for your time and reply messages! I really appreciate all the great information. Peace and Light…✨💕✨
@@lmathews61 You're welcome! Best of luck to you and your daphnia. You're going to do great
Thank you to both of you for sharing! I'm just getting started with microworms and this was fascinating.
Excellent Excellent Informative Video Salute 💯💯💯
Glad you liked it!
Amazing amount of practical knowledge, I had to watch this again! Thank you both for taking the time to film this!! 😁😎👍
Thank you for the kind words! Sean really did a great job on this
Fascinating. Are you going to have a go at cultivating your own live food?
Thanks for the info
No problem 👍
What an amazing aquarist! And fish breeder. Wow! Very informative. ❤
Thank you!
I love this video. Thank you!
I especially liked the daphnia/scuds co-colture with leaf litter and no air stones.
Would you ask Cassandra (or yourself) to elaborate a bit on how to culture daphnia easily?
The easiest way is to keep a container of water outside in a shaded area where it can collect rainwater, and keep it full of oak leaves. This won't give you the largest yield, but it's almost foolproof as far as sustainability
Cassandra is so pretty! Awesome cultures congrats on keeping them all so healthy!🌻🙌
💜
learned :
* you do more water changes in your daphnia cultured water : 50 % a week is a lot but I'm taking the info in :).
* alternative method for cultivating vinegar eels : interesting !!!
* your proposed alternative / last method for feeding grindal and white worms. My first grindal culture crashed : interesting !!!
questions :
* what about culturing outside and dealing with dragonfly larvae. I harvest daphnia from outside and once found a big dragonfly between my plants inside an aquarium that came with the daphnia when still very small... It grew between the plants, and probably killed a lot of fry...
* I use a lot of artemia. You don't talk about this food (reason why she does not us it ?).
* Does she, besides organic waste, feed the daphnia with some extra's ? (algae water, yeast,...) ?
* missing : her experience on culturing infusoria. My efforts (still learning) were not succesfull for a reason. I think dried banana leaves will maybe give me better results.
suggestion :
* increasing to culture mosquito larvea. Take a little bucket with some apples in it (sweet water). Mosquito will lay rafts on watersurface. Collect raft and put them in aged water with organics. it will give you 1000's of mosquito larvae.
* I think I saw a cyclops as well in a daphnia tank. You can experiment culturing them as well.
I 100 % agree with the oatmeal method with yeast for banana and microworms. It's just the best way to do it. Crushed bread is just not that good. I find that on fresh oatmeal substrates, yeast is even not necessary... But yes it helps to regulate things.
And indeed : seed shrimp can be a pain in the a..... in a lot of tanks. A lot of fish won't eat them, and the seed shrimp culture is almost impossible to kill in another way then putting a fish in it that eats them. So be carefull introducing seed shrimp in a tank.
The person I got my daphnia from actually does a 50% water change twice a week for his cultures!
I have never seen dragonfly larvae in any of my cultures. When I harvest from any of my cultures, even in the indoor ones, I always inspect them very carefully before feeding them. The only "invaders" I've had to deal with are mosquito larvae, bloodworms, seed shrimp, and tadpoles.
I don't raise artemia because I have no reason to, and I don't want to deal with the extra effort. I only keep freshwater tanks, and I don't want to bother with saltwater just for a live food culture when my banana worms and ceriodaphnia are smaller than BBS and just as nutritious. There's also the pain of constantly buying eggs if you don't have a permanent setup, or dealing with salt buildup in containers. Too much hassle for me, personally. If you keep saltwater tanks, it would probably be trivial to set up a brine shrimp tank and culture them in a similar way to daphnia. It's just not for me.
You might have noticed I have two tanks inside with daphnia and no organic waste. I feed these cultures chlorella powder daily or every other day depending on how fast they clear the tank. Yeast is not an optimal food for daphnia. They do better on spirulina or chlorella. In the outdoor cultures, I also use a small amount of Black Kow. They love it!
I don't culture infusoria because it's unnecessary. Chlorella (freshwater single cell algae) is smaller than infusoria at 2-10µ, compared to infusoria at 25-300µ. Juvenile banana worms are smaller than 1µ and the adults grow up to 40µ in diameter. I also keep a small amount of prepared food which is 5-200µ. This makes it unnecessary to culture infusoria.
The outdoor tub you see at 9:08 has thousands of mosquito larvae in it. More than I could ever feed. I've actually started freezing them in ice cube trays because there are just so many. One dip with my net into this container is more than all of my fish put together will eat in a day. Your apple method sounds like it would work great. If you want to try a supercharged method - mosquito larvae will do best when fed E. Coli bacteria, which you can get from dried manure like Black Kow.
I do co-culture daphnia with copepods. It's an easy, no effort method to keep them going at the same time. I don't even think about it. They also do very well in my scud containers. It seems like the key with them is organic waste. Their population explodes when there's lots of "stuff" in the container.
Thank you for the comments, questions, and suggestions! I'm glad you found some of this information helpful.
Very interesting! Thanks for working so hard to create new content for us to learn from.
I see you have the Third Edition of Diane’s Walstad book of the planted aquarium. I believe every serious aquarist should have her book to read and study. I raised Daphnia, Brine Shrimps , and other small live foods off and on. I enjoy watching your videos. Thank you for sharing.
It's really an excellent book. There's so much great information in there, and I love that she keeps doing revisions to it and posting them on her site. Glad you enjoyed the video!
Please ask this lady how she manages to keep things out of her cultures like dragonfly larvae which are they themselves predators that can take small fish
I've never seen dragonfly larvae in any of my cultures. I guess I've just been lucky so far. They would be relatively easy to spot when you're harvesting though. -This Lady
I want a beer too
🍻
Wow impressive wish I could keep cultures like that mine tend to crash Seeing this video makes me want to try again with a few cultures like Daphnia, Scuds or some of the worms.
If you need a little help with success, I did a lecture on live foods for the East Tennessee Aquatic Association where I give tips on simple setups for success. They won't give you the highest yield, but they should be easier techniques for most people
@@CassiesCrittersAndCreations I’ll have to look into that talk. I swear it is with out a doubt the most troublesome part of my fish-keeping.
I have kept killifish without feeding the fry live micro foods. I hatch mine in methylene blue water and they eat the micros in there for a week before I take them out into a bigger tank. Crushed flakes or micron ir any fry dried foods will do. They may not grow as fast, but will eventually get to size. Don't get me wrong, I still grow live foods. I just don't use it as much as I would like.
I too grow live food , I grow carrots potatoes peppers tomatoes cucumbers several kinds of greens , chickens , 2 pigs and a steer mmmmmmmmm-mmmm
I’m eating at your place. 😀
@@pecktec you are welcome anytime !
I think I'd prefer dinner better at your house than in my fish room 🤣
Thank you for this informative video. One question. Is there any worry of disease or parasite from feeding live foods , like white worms ?
There is always a worry with an outdoor culture that it might get invaded by dragonfly nymphs, mosquitos, or frog eggs. These are quite common where I live. Indoor cultures can get infested with mites and fruit flies. The key is to check your food after harvesting to ensure you don't introduce anything bad into your tank, and restart your cultures as necessary if they get overwhelmed.
Please tag your online store, i would definitely buy some cultures!
I'm not allowed, but you can find me pretty easily
Oh I didnt know it was so easy to produce daphnia by just throwing in some rotting leaves. I'm going to try. I wonder if some leaves are toxic to the daphnia or the fish being fed daphnia that had eaten them? Should the leaves be thin textured or just any thickness? I live in the tropics so we have many different tree species in the forest. Do they mind tanins and do you have to add calcium chloride? Very informative video thankyou. I'm always looking for live foods, they do make fish so much more active, alive and bright. Should the dapnia and leaves have sunshine or not. I would have to use a mosquito net cover or we would be eaten alive. I used to breed Daphnia by the ton to feed goldfish fry but it was messy and smelly making green water and they would always be crashing as the sheer numbers produced this way are hard to keep going in a smooth linear continuous way.
You can use just about any leaves, but stay away from coniferous trees and needles like pine, cedar, fir, etc. Daphnia don't care about tannins, but they do prefer to be in the shade. I use mosquito dunks to prevent mosquitos from breeding
Do not have breakfast oatmeal with this woman 😂 No..,seriously amazing wealth of info on breeding different feeding cultures.
lol😀
*man
🤣 The thought of eating oatmeal seriously grosses me out now
High are the trays painted black that the cultures are in. Thank you.
The trays are reusable food containers I bought at Walmart
I have some pictures of my worms culture, but I don't know how to put them to comments box 😂
How does she control the mozzies? So many open water tubs. Surely they would carry her away???
I use mosquito dunks
I'm interested in buying some starter cultures , does Cassandra sell them , if so does she have some way of contacting her , except twitter I'm not allowed on twitter ever again apparently.....
A bit late, but I just launched my online store. Cultures will be available this week after I get some good pictures
@@CassiesCrittersAndCreations I KNOW where I'M going to buy my live food cultures from this coming spring!! 🤗😎👍
Live food is always superior to living beings. We can survive on protein bars, key word being survive. Animals and plants are living and that's what we should eat. Why would you give your animals protein bars to exist on. Life requires life
Over doing it with the worms.
No such thing.
I didn't know there was such a large variety of foods. Even more than one type of daphnea. I guess stands to reason. Thank you for the video
Great video.
Thanks! I liked this one a lot.