Moina "our way"

At the moment we keep Moina in 8 aquariums with a size of 12 liters.

The water we use for Moina has a hardness of 7 GH (about 250 micro Siemens) and a pH of about 7. We keep the water in a bucket for at least one day before using it, giving it a chance to get room temperature. Moina can be sensitive to chlorine in the water, making it a good idea to have the water in a bucket or something a day before using it. Moina is also sensitive to overdoses of water processing medium like AquaSafe!

We feed our Moina with dry yeast and a pinch Sera Micron dissolved in water in a bottle, kept in the fridge. Yeast solution is expected to last for 3-4 days, if you have more there is a risk it will get poor and that Moina will be harmed by it. The yeast sinks to the bottom of the bottle, but is easy to dissolve again by shaking the bottle for a short while.

For Moina to thrive it needs a water temperature of at least 20 degrees Celsius in all times. We breed Moina in a temperature of 25-27 degrees and our Moina seems happy with that. Even during summers, with temperatures of 30 degrees, Moina works fine for us.

We have lighting for our Moina cultures, and it's on for about 14 hours a day.

We have at least 10 ramshorn snails in each Moina cultures. The snails help to keep good water quality by eating dead Moina and undissolved yeast. Moina in turn "graze" in the feces from the snails. When we began having snails in our Moina cultures they last much longer and doesn't "crash" as easily.

We feed our fishes with Moina every day. We take out about 2 liters of water with Moina, and cleaning half the bottom surface at the same time. Moina and water are fed directly to the fishes without sifting out the Moina. If you like, you can sift the water with Moina, but we have not noticed any disadvantage by using the water from Moina cultures directly in our aquariums. Once we have taking out as much water with Moina as we like, we feed the yeast solution and fill up with "new" water. When the Moina is recently fed, the water should be slightly milky, to have begun to clear the day after. How much of yeast solution you should feed depends entirely on how well the culture is doing, and it's just trial and error. If you give too much of the yeast solution, the water becomes bad rapidly, and a culture can be ruined overnight.

When a Moina culture produces less and less by the day, it is time to start it over. We have found it best to have multiple cultures going simultaneously. When a culture goes down, it can happen very quickly.

There are many ways to cultivate Moina, this is what works for us.

 

Question:

Question:

Is it OK to dissolve the yeast in a small jar just before feeding the Moina?

Answer:
Earlier we did it that way and it worked sometimes, when the jar was shaken for long enough so that the yeast was dissolved. The risk of doing it this way is that the yeast isn't totally dissolved, making small lumps falling directly to the bottom and contaminating the water.
 

Question:

My Moina smell a lot. Is it supposed to do that?

Answer:
A Moina culture that is in good condition does not smell. If it starts to smell you have probably given it too much yeast, and it begins to turn sour at the bottom.

 

Question:

I'm going on holiday for a couple of weeks. Will my Moina survive that? We have oversight of the apartment every other day…

Answer:
Moina can not go without food for so long. Since it is so easy to feed too much with the yeast solution, the person looking after the apartment can feed the Moina with Sera Micron. Just take a watercolor brush (unused) and dip into the jar with Micron and then shake it over the surface of Moina culture. This way the Moina survives, and it tends to be relatively easy to get it going again when you come home.