Change Page: < 1234 > | Showing page 2 of 4, messages 21 to 40 of 80 - powered by ASPPlayground.NET Forum Trial Version
Author
|
Message
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Tuesday, February 24, 2015 10:17 PM
( permalink)
Another way is to put a drop on a clear rigid piece of plastic. Hold a flashlight on it, and count the swimming dots. multiply by 20-25, and that's a good estimation of how many rotifers/ml. If you don't see any rotifers in one drop, try 5 or 10, and multiply by 4-5 or 2-2.5. The reason I'm giving you a range, is that, depending on the dropper, you may have anywhere from 20-25 drops per ml. If you can measure that, you can determine the size of your drop, and what the multiplication should be.
check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website: http://kathysclowns.com Captive bred clownfish and more (Wholesale to the trade.)
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Tuesday, February 24, 2015 10:57 PM
( permalink)
Thanks Kathy! The second way sounds easiest since I don't have a hydrometer anymore. I actually just put away my refractometer and bought a digital one. I'm nearsighted, and was having trouble reading it. The digital one rocks. I did find a poor man way to view rotifers under my scope. I took the lid off a salifert test container and filled that with culture water. I cannot count this way because my microscope has 4x, 10x, and 40x, and even the 4x is way too big - i can only see 1 or 2 rotifers at a time. Considering returning it, for something that I can count with. I don't like squinting through a loupe either.
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Wednesday, February 25, 2015 8:44 AM
( permalink)
Originally Posted by president89
Is there a magic number for Chloramx dosing? I have the dilution correct, now I need to know how much to feed. Is it just equal parts chloramx dilution to undiluted rg+? Since I was using diluted RG+ that makes it a little confusing. If I go back to the concentrate, how much RG+ should I use? 1ML undiluted for less than 5g cultures? Yes, 1:1 ClorAm-X solution (mixed as above) to undiluted RG+. You feed the rotifers to the number of rotifers, not the volume of water. So, if you have 1 million rotifers in 1 liter you feed the same amount as if you had 1 million rotifers in 5 gallons. It is certainly better to underfeed than overfeed as far as the rotifer culture goes. If you are feeding the rotifers to fish larvae though, you don't want to feed starving rotifers. I'm not sure the exact timeline, but 6 hours with no food is certainly starving. My rotifers are always starving because they go through their food for the day within just a few hours. For this reason, I "gutload" rotifers aka "enrich" them before feeding the larvae. I sieve the ones I want to feed, put them in a small cup with light aeration for an hour with a small amount of RG+, then sieve them out into the larvae tank. I dump the cup water into one of the rotifer cultures so I don't waste any RG+ since they will not eat it all in an hour. I used to use N-Rich PL Plus to enrich the rotifers, and it worked VERY well as far as the quality of larvae went, BUT the smallest size is 1 liter, and I would never use up near all of it. It's expensive, and I was dumping most of it. It's a great product, and it's a shame it's not offered in 250 mL size. I've requested many times over the last few years.
Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Wednesday, February 25, 2015 9:35 AM
( permalink)
The rule of thumb that Randy/Reed presented for rotifers was that 1hr in a rotifers life is like 1 day for a person. This was to stress the importance of having food available for the rotifers at all times. Gresham can, and I am sure will , correct me if I am wrong but I think RG+ was designed to not require enrichment.
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Wednesday, February 25, 2015 2:53 PM
( permalink)
Oh there is cheaper, and other solutions. Thats just a link I had to illustrate what I am talking about.
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Thursday, February 26, 2015 8:06 AM
( permalink)
Originally Posted by president89
...my microscope has 4x, 10x, and 40x, and even the 4x is way too big - i can only see 1 or 2 rotifers at a time. ... I could be wrong, but I suspect that your stage objectives have the 4x, 10x, etc. markings, but the eyepiece objective boosts that another 10x, making it 40x, 100x, 400x. Viewing at a total of 10x-20x is ideal for counting rotifers, in my opinion. You hae a celestron, correct? you can buy slides on amazon that have a little well in the center relatively cheaply, and that is ideal for looking at living critters in water. You can also get some little glass coverslips to protect your objectives and just set them on top of the filled well for viewing.
check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website: http://kathysclowns.com Captive bred clownfish and more (Wholesale to the trade.)
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Thursday, February 26, 2015 9:59 AM
( permalink)
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Thursday, February 26, 2015 10:05 AM
( permalink)
Originally Posted by waldend
The rule of thumb that Randy/Reed presented for rotifers was that 1hr in a rotifers life is like 1 day for a person. This was to stress the importance of having food available for the rotifers at all times. Gresham can, and I am sure will , correct me if I am wrong but I think RG+ was designed to not require enrichment. Yes, RG+ is designed to feed the rotifers in such fashion that they do not require enriching. However, I was referring to the fact that if you have a high density and you don't want to feed to the density (save $$$) that they will be starving between feedings, and WILL require "enrichment" either by allowing them to feed on RG+ for an hour before harvesting or some other "gut loading". OTOH, I can definitely attest that enriching RG+ fed rotifers with N-Rich PL Plus does make a difference! I'm not sure that RG+ fed rotifers are nutritious enough for non-Clownfish (or other basics), so enriching may certainly have a role in the more challenging species. My rotifers eat all their food long before their next feeding. I don't want to harvest these guys with empty bellies.
Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Saturday, February 28, 2015 8:42 AM
( permalink)
Anyone use one of these? https://www.amazon.com/gp..._s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I've been pouring my entire culture through it daily, and then pouring around half through a reeds 40? um sieve to trap rotifers for feed. Anything wrong with that approach. I like it because it saves some time and effort. I do have 50 and 200 of those 5g bucket sieves, but at this point, they don't really serve a purpose. I'd rather use my smaller diameters at that mesh size.
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Saturday, February 28, 2015 7:51 PM
( permalink)
Anyone use one of these to do counts? I found on the the Hoff Plankton Culture manual page 97 under step 3. It seems like a good way to count because the rotifers are restricted to each well. http://www.ebay.com/itm/B...mp;hash=item3f2dcbb37e I purchased this microscope. Had to order a replacement because the 20x lens was missing. 10x with 3x magnifier I can see the rotifers pretty well, except they are pretty clear so I had to use a black background.
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Sunday, March 1, 2015 12:18 AM
( permalink)
I like those filters, except that sometimes they are too big and difficult to get pods off of.
check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website: http://kathysclowns.com Captive bred clownfish and more (Wholesale to the trade.)
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Monday, March 2, 2015 1:17 PM
( permalink)
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Monday, March 2, 2015 1:57 PM
( permalink)
link was originally not working - working now.
<message edited by president89 on Monday, March 2, 2015 2:21 PM>
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Tuesday, March 3, 2015 9:32 AM
( permalink)
I wonder if you have to worry about knocking the eggs of rotifers like you do with copepods? If that's the case, then sieving the whole culture would not be a good idea. In any case, I think you are seriously over-thinking your rotifer culture. I try not to handle my rotifer cultures too much because rotifers "have wings" and get everywhere. I don't want them in my copepod cultures, so I only use small sieves on the rotifers and try not to touch them often. The rotifer cultures are always the last thing I touch before I leave the fish room.
Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Thursday, March 5, 2015 11:35 PM
( permalink)
Killing rotifers. I noticed my cultures not clearing. I sieved them all out, put a very small amount of old water in my bucket, added the rotifers, and added an equal amount of new salt water - total volume is around 2L. I really hate rotifers. ..... Mindy, i think you are right about NOT sieving the entire culture. I think that might be my problem.
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Friday, March 6, 2015 9:43 AM
( permalink)
Yeah, I think you're fussing with them too much. When the culture suddenly doesn't clear as quickly as it normally does, I consider that a partial crash. Ime, there are a few main reasons for a crash; too much food, ammonia, not enough air, water is too dirty. In that order too, I find the latter reason the least likely. I've done experiments to see exactly what I have to do to crash a culture. I purposely crashed cultures during the early days of my rotifer culturing so that I knew what the causes and limits were. This is what I found: - Overfeeding is the easiest way to crash the culture. Grossly overfeeding (keeping medium green color in the culture 24/7) will cause crash as quickly as 3 days no matter the density. - Ammonia killed them when I fed them correctly, left out the ClorAm-X, and didn't do waterchanges to flush the ammonia. With high density, this killed them in about 5-7 days. - Not enough air for the density can kill them very quickly, like 6 hours in a power outage. The causes of low air usually build up over time - like a density that slowly overcomes the available air. Generally, if there is not enough air, the density will only grow to the available oxygen content, not really crash. BUT, if you sieve a culture to be denser, then don't supply them with enough air you will get a partial or full crash quickly. - Dirty water will eventually kill them too. So if I did everything else right, but I didn't do water changes or harvesting, the culture would eventually crash in about 10-14 days with a high density, MUCH longer for a lower density.
<message edited by EasterEggs on Wednesday, March 18, 2015 10:28 AM>
Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Friday, March 6, 2015 11:25 AM
( permalink)
I'm not pushing alot air through. Rigid airline with low to moderate air. Anyone use air stones? I've read they can clog.
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Friday, March 6, 2015 3:33 PM
( permalink)
NO air stones, a waste of good airstones. Water should be "boiling" but not a "rolling boil".
check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website: http://kathysclowns.com Captive bred clownfish and more (Wholesale to the trade.)
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Friday, March 6, 2015 7:29 PM
( permalink)
IME, course airstones. Cost is nothing, you can get 100 of them for pennies on the dollar.
|
|
Re:I keep killing my rotifers
Monday, March 9, 2015 4:20 PM
( permalink)
Still crashing the rotifers. I think my 1ML RG+ per 1 G might be killing the rotifers...I'm going to dump the RG+ i have on hand, and defrost some new cubes just to eliminate that as an issue. I think the tiny volume I had may have warmed up while I had it out. Very easy to warm up an ounce of liquid in just a few minutes.
|
|
|