Rotifer water quality

Is it possible to use my well water and pure salt to culture rotifers without using artificial sea salts? I'd like to be able to do water changes more often so I can stop killing my cultures. I'm on my third starter of 1 million rotifers and I've only got one 1/4" clownfish to show for them so far.

My well water has

ph 8.3
alk 10 dkh
hardness= Calcium and Magnesium 320ppm
Nitrate 40ppm

no Ammonia or Nitrite
 
Should be fine but what "pure salt" are you taking about? You may need to buffer it a little. You might want to ask who your getting your starter cultures though.
 
That is alot of Rots for 1 fish.. Make sure you are harvesting enough of them as well. If you let them over populate it of course fouls the water quicker. How are you controlling ammonia?
 
I've got all 3 cultures from Reeds, The problems I've had with the rotifers are my own fault in one way or another.

The first batch I killed on the second day when I added about a cup of ro/di water directly to the one gallon cultures I had to lower the SG. Lesson learned there.

The second batch was going great until I missed 2 days of feeding and removing them because of a back injury.

This brings me to the third culture that I'm now using.

The second batch of rotifers was fed to a batch of fry that ended up swimming into the glass to there death(300+ dead thread)

then I killed all the rots but, this is where the ONE lonely clownfish came from that's about 1/4" now.

The third group of rots I had to have was for the last clutch of clown eggs that I killed because of fungus. I pulled the pot one hour before lights out but didn't have enough air running.

I've got to keep these rots alive so I can try again on the 20th. My false perc pair has been consistent laying every 10 days with hatching on night 8.

I'm using chloramX for Ammonia but I'd like to stop using ro/di and Instant Ocean salt if I can use my well water and some Mortons 99.8-9% pure salt with no binders, cleaners or YPS.

sorry for all the rambling:crazy1:

BTW I'm now using Two ten gallon aquariums half full for the rots with light aeration from a stone and harvesting about 25% per day
 
I have heard from others here that there is a potential for ciliate contamination when using well water. Cannot site the exact source, it's been awhile but now that the search is working you might want to review this forum for that info. I might have remembered incorrectly.
 
Thanks landlord, I'll look around for that but, I have seen what I believe to be ciliates in all my cultures so far using ro/di when looking at the rots under my scope. These cultures have been started in sterile conditions so I believe the ciliates come in with the rot cultures. I have seen atleast 2-3 of these per ml in my culture water zooming across the slide under the scope.
 
Yeah, that is weird that you haven't seen them in your cultures. I'm not saying there's no other way for them to have gotten into the rots but up until now it seemed like the most likely source for them was the starter cultures.

I've rinsed my syphon hose with my well water and perhaps that's where they've come from.

I'm not sure I want to be drinking my water if that's where they're from:worried:

To tell you the truth I really only stumbled across them on accident when I was adjusting the light source through the slide on my scope. The lower the light shining through the slide, the easier it was to see them.
 
I've got all 3 cultures from Reeds, The problems I've had with the rotifers are my own fault in one way or another.

The first batch I killed on the second day when I added about a cup of ro/di water directly to the one gallon cultures I had to lower the SG. Lesson learned there.

The second batch was going great until I missed 2 days of feeding and removing them because of a back injury.

This brings me to the third culture that I'm now using.

The second batch of rotifers was fed to a batch of fry that ended up swimming into the glass to there death(300+ dead thread)

then I killed all the rots but, this is where the ONE lonely clownfish came from that's about 1/4" now.

The third group of rots I had to have was for the last clutch of clown eggs that I killed because of fungus. I pulled the pot one hour before lights out but didn't have enough air running.

I've got to keep these rots alive so I can try again on the 20th. My false perc pair has been consistent laying every 10 days with hatching on night 8.

I'm using chloramX for Ammonia but I'd like to stop using ro/di and Instant Ocean salt if I can use my well water and some Mortons 99.8-9% pure salt with no binders, cleaners or YPS.

sorry for all the rambling:crazy1:

BTW I'm now using Two ten gallon aquariums half full for the rots with light aeration from a stone and harvesting about 25% per day

We (Reeds) have found glass tanks to be the worst culture vessel you can choose. 5 gallon buckets work much better.

We are also Euplotes free and work hard to stay that way. Since we supply major hatcheries with all their rotifer needs we need to be Euplotes free.

Feel free to email us, we're more then happy to help you through this :D
 
We (Reeds) have found glass tanks to be the worst culture vessel you can choose. 5 gallon buckets work much better.

We are also Euplotes free and work hard to stay that way. Since we supply major hatcheries with all their rotifer needs we need to be Euplotes free.

Feel free to email us, we're more then happy to help you through this :D

Can you give some specific reasons here why glass tanks are the worst thing to use?
 
We're not sure why just know they don't work that well. Could be being clear, could be the glass, could be being rectangular and not round, who knows. We simply found, as have plenty of our customers that have given us feedback, that glass tanks aren't what you want to use.
 
We're not sure why just know they don't work that well. Could be being clear, could be the glass, could be being rectangular and not round, who knows. We simply found, as have plenty of our customers that have given us feedback, that glass tanks aren't what you want to use.

Thats good enough for me then, Thanks

Now I just need to figure out how green is to green or not green enough :hmm5:
 
Maybe the glass tanks let light in I keep mine (reeds rots) in a 5 gallon Home Depot bucket with a lid slightly open to shade light. They have been doing great.
 
another thing most don't think about is it's super simple to contaminate your culture with ciliates. Soil harbors them, amongst other sources, and it's not a stretch for them to survive in lower salinity water such as people use to culture rotifers.
 
Well, once the ciliates are there,, is there a way to get rid of them?

I started a small culture early this afternoon with my well water and mortons salt mixed to a sg of 1.017 and just checked it out under the scope to see how the rotifers were doing and more than 70% of the ones I saw had eggs attached and were really active but, There were 3-5 of these small bugs 1/10th - 1/20th the size of the rotifers zooming around in each drop of water.

I raise freshwater fish and have looked under the scope thousands of times and never seen an abundance of these before I'm thinking it may be the combination of the salt and phyto that get them going. any thoughts?
 
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