Being a field biologist by training, I always wanted to study my beloved amphipods under laboratory conditions. Turns out it is not as straightforward. Our recent publication in Science of The Total Environment highlights some of the things we learned over the last few years. While some amphipod species such as Hyalella azteca are easy to breed in captivity, the freshwater genus Gammarus from Central Europe is notoriously hard to keep and maintain in the lab. Hence, most experiments rely on wild-caught animals. From an scientific point of view, having lab-bred individuals available is the preferred option. To improve survival and reproduction in lab cultures of Gammarus fossarum, we caught thousands of G. fossarum and ran several experiments in our laboratory facilities, tweaking around with food supply, day-length, water temperature, cage size etc. We supplemented the diet of G. fossarum with protein-rich food and provided additional shelter. Both these measures increased survival rate of laboratory-based populations significantly, especially the feed enrichment. We also manipulated the day length (fixed vs. variable). We did not observe a significant effect of day length on the abundance and reproductive activity of G. fossarum. Apart from these main findings, we provide several detailed husbandry protocols in the paper (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158730). They are intended as starting point for future experiments in environmental sciences and ecotoxicology that rely on lab-bred G. fossarum. I want to thank everyone involved in improving our lab cultures of G. fossarum, especially Sarah Bollina, Eva Cereghetti, Morris Galli, Samuel Hürlemann, Silvana Kaeser, Chelsea Little, Manja Schleich and I want to acknowledge financial support by Eawag, University of Zurich, and BAFU.
