Clarifying a bit about Daphnia

[Angi]

Ok forgive me for asking silly questions.

1. How in the world do you clean this "tank" of daphnia? I bought a brine shrimp net and the little guys still seem to slip through, which obviously are the ones I want to be keeping haha. I tried the siphoning and picked up as many shells (or whatevers) as I did live ones... feeling frustrated.

2. My little ones are 3wks old today, all eating the BBS very well, always have orange tummies. I just notice today that I can see front legs.. no toes, just the little mini sticks. When is a good time to start feeding exclusively on the daphnia. I would like to switch over slowly but I don't want to waste the daphnia with my complete water changes after feeding the BBS. Any suggestions?

 

[bugdozer]

I use a 20ml syringe with a quill on it to suck up daphnia, works like a treat to select the ones I want.
I switched from BBS to daphnia when I observed that the smallest tadpole I had was able to eat a good size daphne (when they were very little they tried but found large ones too big!)

Additional - syringe with quill is perfect for sucking up poop and debris from the tank floor, more controllable than a turkey baster.

 

[FireStar]

When I did it, I had two grades of sieves.
You hold both together with the larger holed one in front of the other.
This way, the larger daphnia got caught by the larger holed sieve and the smaller ones when straight through where they are then caught by the smaller grade sieve.
The bigger daphnia are returned to the water where they continue eating and breeding and whatever else daphnia do and the smaller ones become axolotl food.

It sounds complicated, but it's super easy!