who is culturing live foods, esp copepods and phyto?

[timrandlerv10]

do mandarins eat rotifers?

 

[JetCat USA]

very little tiny ones might, my pair never touches em, they do however love BBS and mid sized BS as well as Mysis

 

[Tomoko Schum]

My mandarins don't touch rofifers, either. The pair in my 120 eats adult BS if they can get to them before others do. No one seems to be interested in BBS there. In my pico tank, the tiny nano goby and sexy shrimp eat BBS. I don't see them go for rotifers, either.

JetCat - Thank you for the clarification

Tomoko

 

[Tomoko Schum]

JetCat -

Can you think of an effective way to separate tiggerpods from rotifers?

My tiggerpods seem to grow really well in my mixed culture of tiggerpods, brine shrimp and rotifers. When I try to separate tiggerpods from the rest to produce a mono culture, rotifers always make it in to a container. When rotifers multiply and start clearing phyto really fast, the tiggerpod production drops.

Tomoko

 

[NicoleC]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10906883#post10906883 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by JetCat USA
Nicole with the damsels i tried the sifting the smaller L's to get a population of S but it didn't seam to make any difference and there really isn't much profit in dusky damsels so it was just for my own enjoyment mostly to try.

There isn't much profit in fish breeding, period!

You can't sift L and get S or even a smaller strain of L - sifting just gets you the juveniles.

 

[timrandlerv10]

My tiggerpods seem to grow really well in my mixed culture of tiggerpods, brine shrimp and rotifers

Is that because the pods are eating the BS and rotifers?
Would your current method of removal/straining work well if they were all being put into a display tank?
From what you said, i understood that mostly pods but some rotifers and some phyto would be in the 'selected' culture. If this 'selected' culture were dumped into a display, what would the impact of adding rotifers be?

thanks again!!!

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I don't know why my tiggerpods are doing well in the mixed culture. I was told that tiggerpods are cannibalistic only toward their own young in a crowded condition, but who knows.

I harvest rotifers with a 20 micron sieve and I don't add their culture water to my tanks. I wish I can strain tiggerpods, too, but they cling very tightly to the sieve and it's almost impossible to dislodge them. When I strain the content of the mixed culture, I get rotifers and brine shrimp since just about all the tiggerpods cling to the sieve. On the other hand, the other herpacticoid copepods that coexist in my rotifer containers tend to come right off the sieve. However, these guys do not multiply fast.

Tomoko

 

[JetCat USA]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10908368#post10908368 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Tomoko Schum
JetCat -

Can you think of an effective way to separate tiggerpods from rotifers?

constant sifting with a large enough micron to allow the roti's through and not the tigger pods.. and yes Nicole you can sift continuously to get a smaller strain, you do get juvies but you also sort out the smaller adults too and the continued sifting sorts out to where you've got a smaller strain all together, like if you sorted people by height you'd do the same with humans

 

[NicoleC]

Yes, that's how they got SS. But it still takes a very long time.

 

[timrandlerv10]

they aren't getting greener. they havent gotten brown, nor has the green gotten lighter in color, but they arent getting more dense either.

i fertilized last week (day after i got them) and then on monday (monday is weekly tank dosing day).

they are in the kitchen, under a NO flourescent light.

thoughts?

 

[Tomoko Schum]

It's really hard to say what is going on without seeing it. Is it any lighter than when you took it home? It was ready to split and therefore pretty dark at that point. It will not turn brown if it's crashing. It will just get clear. If it's getting weaker in color and turning very light green/yellowish, you might have contaminated it with bacteria or microorganisms such as some ciliates. Did the culture come into contact with an unsterilized bottle or tools such as turkey baster or tubing?

Tomoko

 

[JetCat USA]

I'd guess you keep shocking the culture with the fertilizers, to much causes a stop in exponential growth, you've very likely over fertilized and you're now out of exponential growth, lay off the fertilizer and be patient.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

JetCat is right about over fertilization. You can shock and crash a phyto culture. However, we went over the amount of fertilizer when you picked up the culture. Are you following the direction on the fertilizer bottle? I recall it's like 10 drops per liter, which is a little bit less than 0.4 ml per liter. If you are using 500 ml bottle, it's 5 drops or approx. 0.15 ml. If you are following the instruction correctly, a contamination is more likely the cause.

Tomoko

 

[timrandlerv10]

i did four drops--the bottle wasnt quite full.

they dont look lighter, they just arent 'darker'

the light is over the bottles...i was thinking about tipping the bottles over at about a 30-45 degree angle to get more direct exposure

thoughts?

 

[Tomoko Schum]

You don't need to tip your bottles. I have all my bottles upright under a shop light.

Did you split the culture into two 500ml bottles and added two drops each? If you added four drops into each 500ml bottle, you overdosed your phyto and they are in a state of shock as JetCat pointed out.

Tomoko

 

[JetCat USA]

i keep my lights beside my bottles not above them. I've got 8 1.75L bottles that i re bloom one each day so they are on an 8 day rotation. starting on the right/front, that bottle will be cut today, the second from the right was cut bout 10 hrs ago, the 2nd from the left was cut the night before and the left 3 days ago. i keep the newly re bloomed in the front so i can watch them for a day or two and then put them in the back where they aren't as easily viewed.

I've never had a crash myself and even when demands drop off such as when i moved my clownfish around and they stopped nesting I've let bottles go 3 weeks without splitting, i notice that around that point they'll start to get a little foam on the top, I'll then split them and i think that's what has saved me from crashes, plus i sterilize my containers every split, some people go 3 or more before they do.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Your phyto culture looks very healthy, JetCat.

My phyto culture (6 pairs of 1 liter bottles) is pretty much on a 8 day cycle as well since I get too busy on weekend to fuss over my bug cultures.

I have light above the phyto since lighting from the side is not easy on eyes, and also since I am using the stand for dual purposes (for seed starting in spring and autumn.)

I believe that you can sterilize less often than once every split as long as you handle phyto bottles with clean hands. I just do it every time (three sets at a time) since it's easy to do so with my instant hot water maker right at my kitchen sink. If I did not have the hot water maker, I'd probably get lazy and do it every other time or so.

Tomoko

 

[JetCat USA]

i seen where you posted earlier about it, what kind of luck have you had with the micro worms? I've done bloodworms in the past but always thought the micro worms seamed like to much of a PITA, your thoughts???

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I've had a good luck with microworms. I still keep them around.

I used to feed my freshwater fish fry with microworms. It's a great baby food for the finiky ones. Especially the tiny ones that cannot handle bbs right away like some (but not all) apistogramma, German Rams, pencile fish and some dwarf anabantoids. Others like angelfish fry did well with bbs right away. Nowadays, I give my microworms to my fresh water planted tank just so I can keep the culture going without wasting them. I saw some tiny babies of pygmy cory cats (Corydoras pygmaeus) swimming around. They obviously survived hidden away in the dense planting, feeding on the tiny food.

Microworms are easy to culture and they are very clean. I have just two culture containers of them. I refresh their small oatmeal bed every two weeks or so. The only problem with them is that they can get smelly if you let the culture media go too long.

Have you tried Grindal worms? They are smaller version of white worms but it's a lot easier to culture. I used to use them to fatten up my breeding pairs of all kinds of fresh water fish. My friend feed her salt water tanks with Grindals without any harm. I am kinda tempted to try it on my reef fish.

Tomoko

 

[JetCat USA]

I used to goto the saw mill and the cotton gin and get mealworms but that was back in my days of Oscar breeding, I've gotten away from FW systems all together and haven't had one sense i divorced my second wife about 5 yrs ago I'm just looking for something to give more diversity to the broodstock feedings that doesn't take up allot of space.