The exception was the culture where the Endlers's were placed. The daphnia vanished entirely and food had to be added - just a small portion netted from a neighboring culture.

Last week an afternoon was consumed pulling all sorts of decaying leaves and an astonishing number of small sticks from that circular 20 gallon container. (It's always better to set up in the shade so the culture isn't cooked.) Several medium sized water lettuce, some Salvinia and water sprite were then pulled, with a small and disappointing addition of hair algae (grrrrr). Mulch time!

Finally it was time to pull the endler's from the stirred up soup. I hoped that there were no dragon fly larvae in there. They give me the hebejebbies. Because the culture was shaded, it wouldn't reflect light very far into the air and draw the attention of mating predators. At least that was the plan.

Sometimes a culture's crashing has to do with the appearance of some predatory bugs in the broth. (A hole is dug, what can be rescued from the culture is rescued and everything else goes in the hurriedly filled hole.) No dragon fly larvae were sighted (Of course they may have metamorphosized out too - but they likely would have consumed the fish first.)

The male Endler's was not to be found. Both females were recovered, having grown. Another young female also was pulled from the mess.

It was discouraging to only find three fish. Small outdoor cultures tend to produce fish with pretty good colors and growth, but not many fry. Perhaps they are better left to production of food cultures.

I remember a friend who used to set up a seasoned kiddie pool in his backyard in a pretty tough Chicago neighborhood. That has a lot of surface are, but no water which is very deep or cool. Between the plants and occasional piece of cement thrown in by neighborhood kids, were a profusion of 3/4s black guppies and several offspring of a couple of killies! Given a chance, these "toy fishes" can be amazing!

As for the ones I pulled out, they were proving their toughness. It was about 60 degrees out. The water was warmer than that because it was comfortable grubbing around in it and laddling it into another 20 gallon container. It still had to be in the high 60s F. though.

For reasons I don't understand entirely, fish outside are able to put up with temperature extremes which would be very hard on indoor fishes. Perhaps the bulk of water and the ground so close moderates changes.

The expatriots are in a bucket at the moment. Every couple of hours a little water from the "set up tank" which contributes biologically active water to new set-ups has been added.