Live Daphnia AKA Water Flea (Daphnia magna) Culture - Aquatic Arts
- In stock, ready to ship
- Backordered, shipping soon
Daphnia are one of the most ideal live foods for micropredators, plus they are easy to culture in the home aquarium!
Daphnia (Daphnia magna), also known as Water Fleas, are small, kidney bean shaped invertebrates that are native to rocky pools along the Atlantic coastline of the northeastern United States. Many members of the genus are also native to brackish and marine habitats. Daphnia are filter feeders, so green water is recommended. They regularly consume zooplankton and phytoplankton. In the aquarium, Daphnia are a superb food source for micropredators, especially small fish. They are often effective in bringing out vibrant colors and spawning behaviors in fish.
Daphnia can reproduce both sexually and asexually. Females can produce eggs as often as every four days in the right conditions. Daphnia will reproduce between temperatures of 64° F (18° C) and 71° F (22° C) or above. They will reproduce at a very prolific rate, and one starter culture is often enough to produce a virtually endless supply of live food, especially if cultivated in a separate tank where they are not outnumbered by predators.
For the safety of our animals, we only ship live fish, crabs, and select other inverts exclusively via UPS 1 Day Air. If your order contains this item, you will only see UPS 1 Day Air as a shipping option during checkout. If other items are in your cart that can ship with 2 day or standard shipping options the only shipping method you can still select is UPS 1 Day Air.
UPS 1 Day is a description of the duration of time a shipment will spend in transit once it has been shipped. This does not guarantee the package will be shipped the same or next day from which the order was placed.
Shipping Schedule for this service
Current Handling Time:
1-9 business days
Here at Aquatic Arts, we consider the welfare of the live animals we are shipping to be of the foremost importance. This process is much more involved than simply creating a shipping label and affixing it to a box. Depending on the order, it takes from 4 to 7 people to complete this process properly. We check the weather conditions here where they fly out of the Indianapolis UPS facility and the destination for each shipment. We start early each morning and go through a multi-step process to have the day's shipments prepared in time for the UPS pickup. The volume of orders in our system also affects the processing time. Therefore our stated handling time is 1-9 business days.
Shipping Rate
Pricing is by size of package needed to fill entire order and distance it must travel. It will be calculated at checkout.