Live food cultures... is there a market?

I'm starting a live food project for several of my tanks... one ecotope, one with fish that won't eat anything else.

Have to do it anyway, but I'm thinking others out there might have the same trouble with getting quality live foods as I do. I'm wondering, would you folks be interested in purchasing sterile cultures?

My little crustaceans will be freshwater only, harvested from a tank set up just for them, with no exposure to other fish or inverts. Price would be low, as once I get the cultures going it should be fairly easy to harvest new starters from them.

And, if you did need live crustacea cultures, would you prefer them separated by species (or type) or would you prefer a mix of various species? I'll be culturing gammarrus shrimp, copepods, and other various mixed crustacea including daphnia and rotifiers (won't be able to separate the mixed crustacea culture as they are too small to tell the difference between them).

I'd love some opinions on this. I know I'll have good starter cultures that are clean, as I've purchased from this company before. They are a tad expensive though it's worth it to me to have clean cultures.

I might also be culturing worms but that's another topic, I suppose.

 

keep me updated with this. I want to know how it goes and may definitely try your stuff down the line.

 

Definitely. I'll post in this thread once I notice them breeding (or notice I have more than I started with lol)

I did introduce a group similar to this into my betta rubra tank (the ones that won't eat anything else) and they gobbled all of the little guys up within a few days. I noticed a few scuds survived, but I haven't seen any for a while.

 

I'm looking at gammarus and daphnia sometime within the next few months... but having suggested a couple of online suppliers to me, you know the price point you'd have to beat to get my business.

It's an interesting idea, though.

 

haha aylad, I knew you'd say that. I have to look at shipping prices for them to see if it would ultimately be feasible, but I know how hard it is to source healthy live food in SoCal. I'm actually thinking of opening a little minI online store for this.

We shall see how it goes

 

I'm looking for other daphnia sp than magnas

 

I'm looking for other daphnia sp than magnas

I believe my starter culture has mixed daphnia. I'll try to find out for sure

 

Yeah, I'm more interested in moina than magna.

 

@junebug Iet me know how it goes.
I am interested in "sterile" daphnia magna cultures.
Unfortunately, I don't have a lfs that stocks it.
Bought it from carolina biological supply and fish gobble before but I am looking for larger quantities.
...and possibly cheaper

 

@junebug Iet me know how it goes.
I am interested in "sterile" daphnia magna cultures.
Unfortunately, I don't have a lfs that stocks it.
Bought it from carolina biological supply and fish gobble before but I am looking for larger quantities.
...and possibly cheaper

I shall! I haven't heard yet about what daphnia sp are in the starter culture.

 

For my fry I keep a culture of microworms and vinegar ells, plus hatching BBS for a varied diet. Vinegar eels are the easiest of all live food to culture.

I haven't tried a culture of larger worms, have instead been relying on LFS blackworms for my apistos and to condition bettas for spawning. While I consider my source of blackworms fairly good and dirt cheap, I would like to start a culture of comparable worms. Most of them seem to be a bit of a trouble though.

Most of my adult fish ignore the smaller live foods, but the black neon tetras who are normally the most boring fish hovering in the same spot suddenly go spastic when I add BBS or vinegar eels.

 

Sooo... the starter cultures arrived today.... a week early :/

Lol! I have them separated for now, into a mixed culture, a copepod culture, and a scud culture. We'll see how it goes.

I was very sad to realize that my homegrown green water culture has somehow died off Hopefully I can get it going again soon so I can feed these little guys! For now, I dropped some crushed algae wafers into the containers and added some dead plant leaves.

 

what is the mixed culture? also what kind of copepods

 

The mixed has all kinds of stuff in it, daphnia, copepods, rotifiers, etc. Not sure how many survived being added to their container, but we shall see

As far as species of copepods, my understanding is the culture contains multiple species. A few of them are large enough to see, just barely lol.

 

HI June, I'm interested and would like to hear your progress with this. For me a TRUSTED source is key, like my relationship with them is like a partnership. It should be someone with consistent good quality, but who also won't hesitate to tell me if they have doubts about a batch for x, y , z reasons. My personal preference is separated by species.

 

Hmm a large portion of the mixed crustacea culture died off.... I think it was mostly the daphnia in it. Little red dots anyway. The scuds are doing awesome, though. They love algae wafers

I think I'm going to clean out one of my little 1 gallon kits and plant it, then pop them in there. They'd probably love that

Might have to order another mixed culture in a while for my bettas. I'll drip acclimate them this time, so hopefully whatever killed the daphnia won't happen again.

And Tracy, I am committed to keeping clean cultures! Partly because I've had enough issues with cross contamination in my tanks and don't want any further issues, and partly because I wouldn't sell anything that I wouldn't buy I will definitely keep everybody updated on whether I can grow out and breed a batch of these little guys

Edit: Never mind, it's the ostracods that died in the mix culture. The daphnia are fine, or at least some of them are. I can see the little dudes swimming around the bottom of the container