anyone locally culturing pods or Rotifers?

[jeff262]

i would like to start a pod or Rotifers culture to feed my gobies and my 16 year old finger leather and his 20 buds that i have saved this year! i am curious if there is someone local that can help me get started with some culture of phyto and pod or Rotifers and maybe some advice
thanks jeff P.S. i live in south lakeville

[epidemic]

I am also interestedd in info on culturing phyto.

[canit0]

Originally Posted by epidemic

I am also interestedd in info on culturing phyto.

I went to something fishy and they had green phyto water and pods for sale. Maybe you can buy and go from there.

[armagedon48]

i have phytoplankton right now. just send me a pm, i go to St. cloud every day but live in watkins. im not sure about shipping in this kind of weather though. and you wont catch me driving around the cities

i also have a sample of rotifer cyst. but i will not have rotifers available for another 2 months.

phyto is free if you want to come pick up a bottle. if you have xenia, ill take that as well. (small bottle)

the speicies is Nannochloropsis oculata (more info can be found here http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issu...02/breeder.htm)

[canit0]

Originally Posted by armagedon48

i have phytoplankton right now. just send me a pm, i go to St. cloud every day but live in watkins. im not sure about shipping in this kind of weather though. and you wont catch me driving around the cities

i also have a sample of rotifer cyst. but i will not have rotifers available for another 2 months.

phyto is free if you want to come pick up a bottle. if you have xenia, ill take that as well. (small bottle)

the speicies is Nannochloropsis oculata (more info can be found here http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issu...02/breeder.htm)

I would imagine this is an alternative to purchasing liquid or frozen invertibrate feeding food?

And is it a rational idea to buy some phyto water from something fishy to attempt to culture it?

[Sea monkey]

Originally Posted by canit0

I would imagine this is an alternative to purchasing liquid or frozen invertibrate feeding food?

It is . theory is even though most of our corals are unable to actually utilize phyto itself, it feeds other larger organisms in the tank that the corals can capture. who knows how much of this is really happening in the tank environment . because the phyto is the building block in this chain I would imagine you would need to be pretty diligent about feeding the phyto to maintain large populations of the larger organisms . The larger the population the more diligent you would have to be as they would eat the available food faster and starve if you got lazy .


Some things like clams and sponges are able to utilize the phyto directly.

[jamielind]

i was told u can start a culture using dt's live phytoplankton but one strain will take over. and it might not be the one you want.

[armagedon48]

jamielind, you are right, dt's can start a culture, however its not recommended because one strain grows much faster than some of the others and would take over.
canit0, if you have cultures of rotifers, then im sure you can replace some invert foods.
i like to grow out brine shrimp in my phytoplankton. i just harvested about 1000 adult brineshrimp from my tub of algae to feed my fish. the brineshrimp have a dark green gut of phytoplankton which i can imagin is very healthy for the fish.
for me, phyto isnt a big food source for my tank, however i use phyto to grow live foods which i feed to my tank regularly.

i think phyto helps boost pod populations. i do have orange and yellow sponges growing in my tank. and i also have tiny oysters (at least 4, just havnt seen them in many weeks).

another thing i have noticed is if your phytoplankton culture crashes, just let it keep going. it will come back. it did for a few of my cultures.

[jeff262]

do you ever have crashes with your brine? i was thinking of pods but brine also would work for me, just trying to figure out what one is easier to culture brine or pods
jeff

[canit0]

Originally Posted by armagedon48

jamielind, you are right, dt's can start a culture, however its not recommended because one strain grows much faster than some of the others and would take over.
canit0, if you have cultures of rotifers, then im sure you can replace some invert foods.
i like to grow out brine shrimp in my phytoplankton. i just harvested about 1000 adult brineshrimp from my tub of algae to feed my fish. the brineshrimp have a dark green gut of phytoplankton which i can imagin is very healthy for the fish.
for me, phyto isnt a big food source for my tank, however i use phyto to grow live foods which i feed to my tank regularly.

i think phyto helps boost pod populations. i do have orange and yellow sponges growing in my tank. and i also have tiny oysters (at least 4, just havnt seen them in many weeks).

another thing i have noticed is if your phytoplankton culture crashes, just let it keep going. it will come back. it did for a few of my cultures.

This is very interesting and helpful. I should be able to maintain a small tank with phyto to raise bryne shrimp for my fish.

Thanks for sharing!

[armagedon48]

to raise brine, i simply leave my phyto as i would if i was growing it. i just add brineshrimp. my phyto culture has been going in the same container for 3 months now, just getting darker and darker. i have added more f2 fertilizer twice now to encourage more growth. i used tank water as well so by the time i harvested my brine shrimp, i had thousands of copepods.
if you are going to raise rotifers, you MUST have a seperate container to raise them in. i somehow contaminated my main phytoplankton jug a long time ago and ended up with 4 gallons thick of rotifers... but the interesting part was that i just let them stay, the rotifers all died of starvation, and about two weeks later the water started to get green again.

in my experience,
- phyto grows faster than any number of brineshrimp can eat it.
- phyto grows faster than a reasonable number of copepods can eat it
- phyto does not stand a chance to ANY number of rotifers. however when the rotifers starve themselves, the 1 or 100 cells of phyto remaining repopulate.

[armagedon48]

OH i almost forgot, in my original brineshrimp culture, i had so many adults that they were constantly reproducing baby brineshrimp! so in theory, if you have a container large enough, you could have a continueous supply of brineshrimp and phytoplankton (just gota keep adding F2).


i have grown out brineshrimp 3 times, each time the culture lasted over a month before i feed them all. i have never had phytoplankton crashes OR brineshrimp crashes.

ALSO i think a factor of my success is that i always have my phytoplankton in a south veiwing window. currently i have my phyto container in a GREENHOUSE .

[borgy]

Does anyone know if this is live rotifers? Could you start a culture with it?

[REEFSTOCK]

"I am master of the great sunken Empire!
mOm, I'm god of the sea people!"
"Thats nice pookins"

[canit0]

Originally Posted by borgy

Does anyone know if this is live rotifers? Could you start a culture with it?

Wetworld is selling a bottle of live rotifiers which is not this picture. The bottle is for culturing them and you can actually see'em floating in the bottle!!! Maybe you can check it out.