Bringing blackwater daphnia colony (+1 shrimp) inside

[tam]

I've had a bucket of daphnia running all summer, started it with a bag from the LFS in a black 15L (ish) bucket about half full. Had rainwater and some decomposing raspberry leaves to start and I've topped it up a few times with old tank water as we've been short on rain. Only upkeep was chucking a couple of new leaves in now and then and I've been harvesting mosquito larvae and daphnia all summer.

I decided to move them inside for winter, set up a little tank on the window sill and emptied most of the contents (left the bottom 2" see if it will restart itself in spring). Must have accidentally moved out a baby shrimp at some point! I think I'll dry out some leaves for winter feeding.

 

[Aquahorti]

If you want to keep the daphnia going all winter, you will need to feed them either by making sure there is enough light to provide them with algae, or feeding them yeast (anything very fine will do, but yeast is a known method).

Over the winter it costs us about 1€ in fresh yeast to feed/breed daphnia enough to feed 5 Bettas with a very generous supplement of daphnia to their normal dried food.