Daphnia, also called water fleas, are one of the best live foods for tropical fish, especially discus that are not eating dry foods.  We feed our discus daphnia as one of many varieties of foods.  We have found that feeding live daphnia results in a remarkable improvements in the appearance, health and longevity of our discus.  Also an excellent food for conditioning breeding pairs to spawn.

We feed our adult discus Daphnia magna (largest daphnia) and pulex.  Moina are smaller cousin of Daphnia which we used to feed 4-6 weeks fries.

Our daphnia are kept in rubbermaid tubs in backyard.  Air stones are used for aeration  Green water is usually not a problem by keeping them outside.  We used our old fish water without medication as a water source because they are very sensitive to heavy metals in tap water.  They are fairly hardly.  Here in Dallas, we had a few freeze over, but daphnia still survived.  They reproduce very fast.  We feed them a pitch of yeast when the green water starts to clear.  Some customers have tried Marine Invertebrate foods and Baby fry foods with success.  

Some have ask us if there are any risk of disease introduction to our discus by feeding them live daphnia.  Ever since we started keeping discus (5yrs), we have never had a discus disease that could be attributed to feeding live daphnia.

They are also make excellent feedings for one month old betta, killifish,and goldfish fry (any fish 1/2 inches-4inches); Newts/Salamander larvae; conditioning for breeder pairs, etc.  We have available larger amounts of magnas for feeding,  Let us know if you need larger quantities (>50,000).

For all the answers to keeping daphnia/moina, here is an excellent article by University of Florida. Click on link below.

     

Daphnia Video      3.9 mb Windows Media Player

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Daphnia magna  Cultures

Daphnia pulex cultures

Moina cultures

Item Name: All 3 Starter cultures
about 300 of each
Price: $18

LIVE DELIVERY ARE GUARANTEED except shipping cost.   We ship by USPS Priority Mail (2-3 day delivery) w/ delivery confirmation.  We ship on Monday and Tuesday only to avoid weekend delays.   Overnight delivery by USPS available on other days.  All quantities are approximant, as it's impossible to count, but we usually give more than enough.

Payment is by Paypal above or Money Order/Cashiers check to our contact address.  Make payable to John Tran.  We will ship them on Monday or Tuesday after payment is received.

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Last modified: 02/19/04