IndianaSam
CCA Members
Inspired by this posting about 10 years ago, plus the fact the I'd like to get away from hatching bbs, I've decided to try to co-culture dero worms and moina. This is my attempt to chronicle it. I see all kinds of postings about this from 5 to 15 years ago, but can't find anything current. My suspicion is that if this was truly an awesome and super productive co-culture that everyone would be doing it so I'm skeptical, but I'm also teleworking and have plenty of time on my hands these days and decided to finally try it.
To that end, I purchased 2 portions of dero worms about a month ago. They've done very well in a shoe box sized plastic bin eating algae wafers with aeration and 90% water changes every few days, but I can't see it scaling well or housing the (eventual) moina well. So, I picked up 2 - 10 gallon aquariums (thanks G Goonie ) for the culture (pictured in the next post) equipped with well seeded sponge filters and transferred about 1/3 of the worms to each tank reserving the final third to continue in the plastic bin.
Once these get going, my plan is to buy a moina culture. From everything I've read, the dero worms eat food, their poop sustains infusoria and then the moina eat the infusoria so I want to give the worms at least a few weeks in their new home before introducing moina.
After the moina are introduced, water changes will come from the established aquariums above the culture tanks in order to provide "aged" water.
Stay tuned for updates!
To that end, I purchased 2 portions of dero worms about a month ago. They've done very well in a shoe box sized plastic bin eating algae wafers with aeration and 90% water changes every few days, but I can't see it scaling well or housing the (eventual) moina well. So, I picked up 2 - 10 gallon aquariums (thanks G Goonie ) for the culture (pictured in the next post) equipped with well seeded sponge filters and transferred about 1/3 of the worms to each tank reserving the final third to continue in the plastic bin.
Once these get going, my plan is to buy a moina culture. From everything I've read, the dero worms eat food, their poop sustains infusoria and then the moina eat the infusoria so I want to give the worms at least a few weeks in their new home before introducing moina.
After the moina are introduced, water changes will come from the established aquariums above the culture tanks in order to provide "aged" water.
Stay tuned for updates!