How to keep daphnia alive?

[Ernis]

Daphnia can be cultivated only in raceway ponds under care. Forget using electritcity! Sun is at this moment for free. Place 1kg/10m3 bag of horse manure(bird manure has lots of PO4, you will end up algea bloom in your fish tank), cover whole tank from birds with net and WIND. Yes its very strange that wind can involve in this process, but its the only way to success. Horse manure will start root, and increasing rotifiers and infusoria culture naturally. Green water/algea mostly protosans will acure too. Its food chain from smallest to biggest. Daphnia should be food chain end. Temperature will be main ingreadient in this recipe for fast, easy food. And sure its free. Contaminants like hydra and bloodworms, cyclops and stuff can be there too, so its your choice to risk.

[simonchan]

My daphnia culture is still going strong after 5 days (LFS said they won't last a day and in the past they didn't without filtration). Looks like the bubble filter works with a few granules of yeast (baking kind) every couple of days, whenever i run out of green water, plus daily detritus that i siphon from the fry tank which also saves me disposing of it. I still have a steady daphnia supply for my fry.

I suck them up through a turkey baster, strain them through a soup bag (the kind used to hold herbs/ garnishing in soups and stocks), and the water goes back into their tank.

Findings:

Batch 1: No air stone (died a horrible death)
Batch 2: Need a filter (50-60% loss by morning)
Batch 3: Still going after 5 days. Feed green water, yeast (not too much apparently), and detritus from fish tanks (versus animal waste - the thought of using my dog's poo crossed my mind but only so briefly LOL). So far the food source is "clean"

Also found this very useful article: http://www.caudata.org/daphnia/#cult1