My main live food cultures are done outside year round other than winter. Everything is co cultured and I call it goldfish salad. It consists of greenwater production of mosquitoes, bloodworms, glass worms and seasonally fades to blackwater and duckweed along with the various mix of bugs that changes with the season.
I use 100 gallon Rubbermaid tubs to co culture bugs and duckweed. The mix of bugs changes through the season and the maturity of the tub. I fill the tub up, put in some oak leaves, wheat straw, urine and mucked up duck water from their water bowls. You need to get a good ratio of nitrogen (duck muck, urine etc) and carbon (straw, leaves etc.) or the system won't bloom.
Daphnia/moina are the early bloomers which usually show up on their own but are sometimes added from another culture. As the season and maturity of the tub produces various mosquitoes, bloodworms, glass worms and etc take off. Their peak seems to be June/July before it gets to warm and again in the fall. At peak times I can take several tablespoons of pure bugs out. When the duckweed is in the mix it can be much more being half bugs and duckweed. I try to keep the duck weed harvested to keep it and everything else growing at maximum rates. Seems about 50% duckweed cover is best, more than that and everything starts to slow down a bit. When copepods start taking over I either restart the tub or mess with the nitrogen carbon mix to get things going again.
My major live food development this year was that daphnia/moina do not need green water to be productive. Here in Oregon I get green water from Feb March to June in several different blooms and then again in the fall. I used to rely solely on this for bug food. What I learned this year is black water is much easier to make and keep going. It's black from tannins but it produces the reddest daphnia you can imagine. They are feeding on bacteria that thrive in the black water. The mix above will give you good greenwater blooms but once those pass seasonally the black water takes over. So we're trading the greenwater for the duckweed that takes over when the sun is out and things warm up.
