Example -- culture crash and bacterial bloom

While not any of the species we will be working with this is still a good visual of what a nice solid culture crash looks like.  This was a culture of Pseudodiaptomus that I brought back from the workshop... granted the copepods didnt make the first week on my return (too much stress from refridgeration and travel) I decided to let the culture bubble in an erlinmyer for a little while to see what cropped up.  The culture was fed a mixture of Rhodomonas lens, Gymnodinium sp., Nannochloropsis, and Isochrysis paste.  interestingly enough the Nanno held in for a little while there but during tonights nightly culture run I decided it was time to pull this guy off the shelf.
 
Notice the milky white coloring to the water, this is very tell tale of a bacterial bloom.  Naturally the bacteria left in this failed culture is feeding on the remains of what once was several dead copepods and many decaying algal cells.
 

 
Normally it is not in my nature to let a culture go this far south before pulling it from the rack as having it near my other cultures increases the risk of cross contamination and thus multiple culture crashes, but truth be told I got lazy on this one.  Turned out well though as I have some good pics to illustrate bacterial take over.

Pelagically yours,
~J      

A picture worth a thousand words!  Thank you for the picture!
 

wish I could have gotten a better one, in retrospect having a white backdrop helped but it was an awkward angle.  Maybe later I'll purposely crash a rotifer culture and get a side by side or something.

Pelagically yours,
~J      

Nice example Joe.

like Jish said... deposit... NO refunds  -thejrc

not meaning to take over your thread but I had the same thing happen this week. I asked what I could do with it and I was told to just dump it. What would it hurt if I try to save it? I asked my husband if we had anything in the house that kills off bacteria. He said we had marycin tablets in the fish closet. so I treated with that and the water cleared back up within 24 hours.  no harm to my rotifers. heres the link to my thread with pictures.
http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/breeding-journals/breeding-journal-brachionus-plicatilis-rotifers-17395/

Plenty of options when it comes to much of the invaders, by no means does a bloom mean the immanent death of a culture. Though do bear in mind that a lot of times we need to keep things very pristine. In most cases a full culture dump followed by aequipment scrub is the best policy.

Pelagically yours,
~J      

yeah, I'm not using those rots for a while til I know that bucket has been turned over a few times.

On the other hand, bacteria passes right through a 50 micron sieve. Rots don't.

--Andy, the bucket man.
"Not to know the mandolin is to argue oneself unknown...." --Clara Lanza, 1886