How to Grow Rotifers

I'm doing mine on a smaller scale, but when i harvest i dump them with their water( only about 2 cups) , and i can see them in the reefs water when i'm dumping them.. there is a close-up video of the bottle here Desktop Rotifer Grow I can barely see them, and was also questioning if there was really anything in the bottle alive, until we did the close-up video.. maybe try to shake the filter into a small clear container and then take a look see...

Originally Posted by RCA

I posted this question in my other thread but I think it belongs here.

How do I know if I'm harvesting correctly?

I'm filtering about a gallon of culture water through a brown coffee filter every day. But I'm not seeing rotifers in the reef tank when I shake it out...

I'm assuming in the smaller tank I'll actually be able to see them. But is there any chance that they're making it through the generic coffee filter brand I'm using?

You gotta rinse the filter real well to get them all out. It took me a while to figure out how long to rinse the filter to recover most of the rotifers.

The coffee filters we use catch them fine. We use the cheap white ones. I dont know what the difference between the two are though.The next time you filter them out collect the water after the filter and see if there are any in it.

Is your culture going from green to gold every day?

what about cleaning your culture buckets? Do you filter them out? Do you just be really careful about pulling out the rotifers? My buckets are starting to get pretty nasty on the bottom. I was thinking about using the 120um screen to get all the junk out and hope the rotifers would go through that screen and back into the culture.

If I use the 53um screen it will catch all the rotifers, but I'm sure it would catch all the crap too.

Or should I just leave them alone? I've heard of people doing that and never having a crash.

We clean the buckets once a week by either siphoning out 2/3rds of the culture into a clean bucket or slowly pouring 2/3rds of the culture into a clean bucket. Some people use filter floss but weve never tried it Reef Nutrition - Specialty Products

For my rotifers and copepods I've been able to siphon out a lot of the gunk at the bottom of the bucket with a turkey baster. I do this every 4 days or so. I also occasionally transfer my rotifers to a clean bucket and add some fresh salt water with the same salinity. So far this has worked well for me.

Thanks Chris!!!

I've got to get this done this weekend.

the KISS principle works best.........and I got that directly from Randy Reed: once a week, take out the bubbler from the culture bucket - - use a paper towel to do this so that you can clean the tubing and bubbler at the same time........let the culture sit "still" for about 30 mins so that everything settles on the bottom.......then slowly dump the old culture bucket into a clean bucket and when you start seeing crud then stop dumping - - it usually leaves about 1/3 or 1/4 of yucky culture and crud in the old bucket.................and nothing but clean happy culture in the new bucket! then top off the new culture with new rotifer salt water and add back the cleaned bubbler!

Are L type rotifer what I need for clown fry??? Maybe I have been getting the wrong type

Yup, they love it.

I did double check with Barb's first post here first to make sure.

oh no Paula!!! I assumed that you were raising L-type - so sorry ..........that really could make a difference! what kind are you culturing????

They are L type I was just checking they were the right ones

Microscope always comes in handy for that. I would let you guys have mine but I fried it at the last club meeting...wrong power cord. Plugged it in, wouldnt do anything other than a bright wight light....then smelled the burnt electronics smell. After that it would not turn back on

Originally Posted by PaulaP

They are L type I was just checking they were the right ones

woo hoo!!!

Originally Posted by D3monic

Microscope always comes in handy for that. I would let you guys have mine but I fried it at the last club meeting...wrong power cord. Plugged it in, wouldnt do anything other than a bright wight light....then smelled the burnt electronics smell. After that it would not turn back on

eeeeeewwwwwwwww

Rotifers seems harder according to other resources, reading that gives confidence though but i totally missed something...

Can we use the same water for daily changes after seizing them or it must be brand fresh salt water ?

Can we use the ex-larval tank or ex-BS tank water from the water changes unless it has no NH3 in them ?

Otherwise fresh salt water would cost a lot ?

Thanks

I'm sure you could use old tank water from water changes, it would have extra food for the Rotifers.

If using old tank water heat it to 180 degrees to kill anything that can feed on the rotis.

Ah good point, didnt think about rotifer predators.