Outdoor rotifer culturing

[Anonymous]

Does anyone here culture rotifers outdoors a la Joyce Wilkersons comments in "Clownfishes?"

I had ten gallon tank of rotifers crash and I just ignored it until the weather started to get warm here. I took a chopstick, stirred all the funk into suspension and put about four gallons of it into an old salt bucket and placed it in the garden.

Yesterday, after about two weeks, I looked in and it is full of rotifers! I haven't fed it or nothing. I am so stoked! I plan to split this culture up and get another one going next to it.

Apparently Wilkerson adds phyto to fortify the roti's before she harvests them for feeding.

 

[Len]

No experience raising rotifers myself, but you should market that rotifier mud

What are you feeding the rotifers to? Anything specific?

 

[Anonymous]

I have a pair of tomato clowns that I lay eggs alot and I have raised one clutch so far.

I think I am ready to do another one when they have more eggs. I thought it was best to spread out the "litters" so I would not overwhelm myself. I did that when I was raising banggai, I tried to always save every little baby, and now I can't stand to look at another banggai.

I also feed rotifers to my reef whenever I get around to it.

I would like to get eggs from my friends fish and try to raise other species, but until now I didn't have a reliable source of rotifers because my indoor cultures crash all the time. (Purely because I am too lazy for all the monitoring they need) Now, I think this outdoor culture will be the key.

With two or three outdoor cultures, I should always have rotifers! They seem to be able to live off of the occasional leaf or bird poo that falls in the bucket, as I have not added a drop of phyto. It seems the lower feeding keeps them at a managable level, they don't go into population explosion and crash.

I will keep up to date how it is going.

 

[Mac1]

That would be really interesting to see... Read the same section and thought "Sure, but not in Upstate New York!".. Well, you're not THAT far away from me, I'll betcha it would work. I've heard of people doing that w/ Brine, but..

Might want to be careful come Mosquito season however, if your area sprays for West Nile, I wouldn't want to be in the middle of raising a clutch

- Mac

 

[Anonymous]

Apparently according to the book I read about the technique in, the whole culture can freeze in the winter and it restarts after the thaw.

I mentioned in the earlier post that it has been up for about two weeks, now that I think about it, it has been more like 4 weeks. I set it outside when it first started to get warm here, then we had a big cold snap and everything froze, the bucket had ice on top. It has been about two weeks since the thaw, and I can see the little buggers buzzing around all over the place.

When it gets too cold for them they go into "terminal mode" and produce cysts. As the weather becomes more agreeable, the cysts hatch!

 

[ADS]

Rotifers are tough to kill. Their eggs encase and become dormant and 'weather' tolerant.
Nutritionally rotifers should be fed w/ phyto 12 hrs before feeding to corals, larval fish etc...
I culture rotifers and my 5g carboy consumes 2L live phyto per day and would consume more if I fed more frequently. They are the best coral food I've found.

 

[Mac1]

I'll be damned.. so you don't even have to worry about salinity or anything? Just chuck a bucket of SW out by the garden and throw some cysts in it? You've got to be kidding me...
<I too, am too lazy to have kept any of my rotifer culturing attempts going for very long >
I suppose in a storm or something it might be a good idea to cap the bucket.. and perhaps mark the water line for the dry season, but... I think I just found something else for the wife to hate about my tank.. THANKS!

- Mac

 

[Anonymous]

Joyce Wilkerson, who I got this idea from, says that if it rains hard she just tests the salinity and slowly adjusts it back to normal.

If too much water evaporates, just dump some more in. She apparently discovered this because she left some rotifer change water on her back deck for a while, and when she went to clean out the buckets, weeks later, noticed it was teaming with rotifers

She said when it gets up to near 100 degrees, she moves it close to the house so she can run an air stone for more airation. It doesn't ever get that hot here.

I just thought it seemed that trying it was a no lose situation, I just dumped the old funky rotifer water in and parked the bucket outside.

I talked to the guy at my lfs, who raises clowns, and he said he has done the outdoor thing too.

I am so glad I have other people to talk to about this. I am just pleased as punch about my bucket o' rotis. I think my husband thinks I am a little bit nuts when I start babbling with glee to him about how great the roti culture is doing.

 

[Mac1]

LOL! I can appreciate that story...
Back in my bachelor days, I was able to grow Phyto in 2L bottles on the apartment window-sill... These days I get yelled at about the electric bill if I want to run a couple Flourescent Shop-lights...
Hehehe :twisted: I can't wait to see her face when I throw one of the old 10-gallons out on the patio filled w/ some funky greenish-yellow water! ROTFL!!!

- Mac

 

[Anonymous]

Note that I think the key with this is to not keep feeding phyto, I am just letting them subsist on the little bit of debris that lands in the bucket. It keeps the population just where it needs to be to thrive yet not explode and crash.

All this I got from the book "Clownfishes" which has a section in the rotifer culturing methods called "outdoor culture serendipidy"

 

[Reefguide]

Mulbery:

Man, I'm glad you just posted this...

I was just checking my culture no more than an hour ago and they are alive but I see very little of them in there (5g bucket)... I had tons and their #'s are deminishing... I also read Wilkersons book and wonmdered if that would actually work...

My question to you... Are you even airating the culture ?? I'm expecting another clutch of eggs soon and was acctually going to order another bag of live rotifers...

 

[Mac1]

Note that I think the key with this is to not keep feeding phyto, I am just letting them subsist on the little bit of debris that lands in the bucket. It keeps the population just where it needs to be to thrive yet not explode and crash.

That's the beauty of it! I'm out there all summer long, and can watch a water line.... But the phyto was one of the hard parts of growing them. If I can rely on mother nature to do it for me... JUST what I'm looking for.
I've read Joyce's book, but didn't remember that section. Glad you jogged my mind. Now if I can just remember who borrowed it from me..

- Mac

 

[Reefguide]

Just to add something, in my indoor culture I use roti-rich from florida aqua farms anyone using that?

 

[Anonymous]

No airation.

There is a little bit of algae growing in the bucket now and I see a bubble pop up from time to time, (Yes, I sit out there and stare at my rotifers LOL) I presume the algae is giving off oxygen bubbles, perhaps this helps.

Here in Iowa it has been in the 50's or 60's lately, I don't know if since you are in FL, you may need to airate if it gets too hot.

 

[Anonymous]

Just to add something, in my indoor culture I use roti-rich from florida aqua farms anyone using that?

I have been using phytoplankton (Nannochloropsis) but I do know other folks who use the roti rich.

 

[Reefguide]

Well, I might just start my culture over again I think I'm screwed !!! I have had no time to check my cultures params... Check this out...

Amonia off the chart !! BTW, I tested 3 times... and test kit working ok...

 

[Anonymous]

Well, about two weeks after my post here I couldn't find a single rotifer

Since my dumb clownfish had decided to stop spawing any way I figured I should just accept my fate as a failed clownfish breeder and move on. Being lazy, I just left the bucket in the yard next to the garden

In early june I noticed adult brine swimming about. I am sure some eggs were in the original rotifer cyst water, but this population is self sustaining. Every other day or I net a few out as a supplement to some juvi clowns and the one baby bangai I found struggling in my sump. I can find brine at all stages of life in there too. It's really neat. Now this isn't a dense population of brine, just enough for me to give a treat to my fish every now and then.

So yesterday I am staring into the bucket watching the brine dance around, and I think I see rotifers. The water is tea colored from the dead leaves in it, and it really highlights anything swimming near the surface. This would be just too sweet, since my clowns had finally spawned for the first time in a long while the other day.

I use one of those plastic box swing arm hydrometers to judge roti density, since it lets you look through a small sample of water. I run in and get it and take a sample of the water, and there are more rotifers that I have ever seen in my life!!!!!

Lucky Day! So now I need to split up the culture, so I can hopefully have a constant supply should this one crash, which is what I assumed had happened when I tested back in late april and couldn't find any.

 

[Anonymous]

Congratulations, Laura, you are now the mother of a healthy culture.

 

[Reefguide]

Yup, that's happend to me lately too !! I strilled up the old dead culture and added about maybe a half gallon to another container with fresh saltwater and poof !! I've since restarted several cultures that have crashed like that ! Just keep seperate cultures so that hopefully you'll have a culture doing well when the clowns spawn !!