phytoplankton, brine shrimp, & rotifers

[causeofhim]

Has anyone grown/cultured their own phytoplankton, brine shrimp, & rotifers? How did it go? Are you still doing it? Was your livestock happy?

If I end up with too many, can I keep them in the refrigerator? How long?

Thanks

 

[Jiddy]

You should get Elmo's recipe, hes doin somthin right

 

[Elmo18]

Has anyone grown/cultured their own phytoplankton, brine shrimp, & rotifers?

Yes, yes, and yes. I am doing them at the moment. Several others here are also culturing, including 'uwscotch', 'coralbeauty', 'donw' and some others for sure.

How did it go?

Its doing ok so far. I say ok, because I just had a couple phytoplankton cultures crash on me...on my dumb mistake. Couple rotifers got in there somehow... Other than that, it does take some work each day, and that includes maintenance/feeding.

Are you still doing it?

Yes I am. Currently looking to increase my cultures...but slowly, and over time.

Was your livestock happy?

I hope so My clowns love it and lots of fish and anemones will eat brine shrimp, albeit it is not very nutritious. There is nothing better than live foods to feed your tank once in a while.

If I end up with too many, can I keep them in the refrigerator? How long?

Keeping excess brine shrimp is actually really simple. You can freeze them in little flattened baggies to thaw out later and feed, or you can use those Formula 1/2/VHP frozen food trays and fill them up and freeze them. You can get really crafty here...

In my opinion, you can't really keep them alive in the fridge because they need aeration...and cannot survive low temps.

Phytoplankton you can store in the fridge. If you look at DT's Phytoplankton it is shipped cold.

As for rotifers, the same as brine shrimp. They will go into thermal shock from the cold temperatures. I haven't tried freezing them and trying to feed my fish that, but that may be done.

I will let others chime in. Adelaide will be helpful as well

- Elmo

 

[jeffkeith_us]

Hi Gobie
Yes to the first five questions. You don't need to worry about having too many rotifers or brine shrimp. Just feed them to the fish or grow them out. You really need to keep-up with the Green water or you will not have enough. My cultures can go through two liters a day, each.
Frank Hoff who is the owner of Florida Aqua Farms and Terry Snell wrote the best book I have ever seen on this entire subject, Plankton Culture Manual.

 

[bc_slc]

I cultured phyto for a long time (2+ years) all from the same propagated culture I got form florida aqua farms. The only problem culturing I ever ran into was if I didn't clean the bottles out with bleach every once in a while, I would get bacterial overgrowth and the culture would crash. It was never a big deal though, because I always had some in the fridge to restart the culture.

I never got into rotifers as they are currently too much maintenance on my current schedule.

I stopped culturing phyto about 2 months ago as I am dealing with a pretty heavy algae problem. I think the phyto was adding phosphates as the phyto-food is very nutrient rich. This was despite letting the phyto settle out over a couple days and tossing out about half the liquid and reconstituting in new salt water to try and dilute out the nutrients.

I may start dosing again in the future, but for now, my plans are on hold.

 

[DonW]

Has anyone grown/cultured their own phytoplankton, brine shrimp, & rotifers? How did it go? Are you still doing it? Was your livestock happy?

If I end up with too many, can I keep them in the refrigerator? How long?

Thanks

As far as rotifers go they are easy. I dont think you will end up with to many. I keep 2 1.5g aga tanks going full time. I keep 2 in case one dies but I've never had that happen.

Don

 

[jeffkeith_us]

What kind/how many crabs and snails do you have?
Do you have a Refugium?
Do you have Copepods?
Jeff