Sustained daphnia/moina culture indoors?

In reading over various threads about daphnia, it seems like those who report the most success keep them in outdoor tubs/pools where nature does most of the work. Does anyone regularly keep them in aquariums or other indoor tanks and have long-term stable cultures? I think I remember someone (Moontanman or Irate Mormon?) keeping them in pools in a garage, but I may be thinking of blackworms.

I tried Daphnia magna in a couple aquariums a few years ago and had some brief success, but then the cultures crashed. I'd like to try again but want some more confidence that it would be successful.

If you do keep them long-term indoors, what are your methods? Thanks.

Mine always crash from neglect indoors a month or two into winter, but Jim Long told me he's kept Moina and Daphnia indoors all winter feeding them a dilute mix of yeast, sugar and whole wheat flour. I think he said to mix a 1/2 teasp of each in a quart bottle of water (going from memory - could be wrong!) No chlorine of course, wide surface area, and frequent small feedings and water changes. Use 'em or Lose 'em.

We have had our D. magna cultures going here for years with very little maintenance - the trick is to have multiple cultures up at once so that when one crashes, you can easily just drain, bleach, refill and seed it from one of the others. I attached a few pics of our setup as built and maintained by our research technician (it is probably more than most folks need at home- but for someone with a sizable fish room it may be just right). There is a pic of the rack that holds the tanks (Daphnia on top, scuds on the bottom), the tanks themselves, the adjacent greenwater cultures (Nanno and Schroderia sp.), and a typical harvest of Daphnia. The tanks are flat, 30x15x9 inches, and hold about 10-12 gallons each (Sterilite/Rubbermaid storage bins from your local mega mart also work well), each tank has an airstone and a small heater. We feed them daily with Roto-rich or greenwater (or both), and typically only do water changes when there is a noticeable smell We can harvest about 200-400 per week, per tank (depending how well they are doing) and keep the populations sustainable. They do crash though, on average we see one crash every few months, but as I said, with multiple cultures going, it is real simple to just re-start a culture and let it build it's numbers back up. We get huge populations of planaria and snails in the cultures, but these don't affect the daphnia - however when the scuds get into the Daphnia tanks they wreak havoc- we recently lost 2 of our cultures to a scud infestation and nearly lost the third, but once they were all re-started we had booming populations again in 3 weeks...so in short I guess what I'm trying to say is that it is entirely possible to keep these critters going indoors, just hedge your bets and set up 2 or 3 cultures at a time to make it easy on yourself (and provide you with more Daphnia!)

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I used a mixture of yeast and alfalfa meal. Also wide surface area with gentle aeration (my tanks were old stainless steel creamery tanks. Care was taken to control buildup of solids. A constant addition of water seemed to reduce likelihood of population crashes.

Problem I had with feeding Daphnia sp. (probably D. magna) to rapidly growing crayfish is crayfish would turn blue, like those so sought after in aquarium trade. Pigments in food chain were not proper for crayfish. Alfalfa may not have been best nutrient source in fed mix.

Thanks much to centrarchid and especially BLChristie for the detailed info. I'm thinking maybe I'll try an outdoor culture once it gets warm enough (May?), and then maybe try to bring it indoors next fall. For now, I think I'm sticking with worms -- definitely seem more foolproof than daphnia.