Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp.

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shannpeach
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Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Thursday, April 18, 2013 12:05 PM
Culturing Journal DataSheet
This first post should be updated regularly to include new information as events take place or changes are made to your system

General
Species:  Gymnodinium sp.
Species description: marine, naked dinoflagellate, requires low light
Culture source (link if possible):  carolina.com
If algae, CCMP # (Optional): 
http://ccmp.bigelow.edu/
Culture Establishment Date:  4/17/2013
Continuation Date: 

Culturing Vessel Details
Salinity:  1.020
Temperature:    Room temperature, ~72F
pH:  Not measured

Vessel description:  500mL bottle
Lighting description:  Compact fluorescent
Lighting cycle:  24 hours
Aeration description:  slow bubble from rigid airline

Methodologies
Split methodology:

Culture medium description: 
(this could range, example with algae could be “10ml per l of guillards F formulation” or with A. tonsa it would be more like “300ml per day of algal mixture containing gymnodynium, tetraselmis, isochrysis, and rhodomonas” )

Cell count:
 (if known)

Reference links:  

Additional Information
(No Pictures or Videos in the Section Please)
Notes: 
Water is sterilized using bleach and dechlorinated using sodium thiosulfate


You will be required to provide photographic evidence and as much detail as possible about your project in this thread.
If your thread does not contain detailed enough photos  and information the MBI Council will not be able to approve your reports.

<message edited by shannpeach on Tuesday, April 23, 2013 3:56 PM>

shannpeach
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Thursday, April 18, 2013 12:09 PM
The culture in the test tube:

 
In the culture container:

 



 
I ordered this culture mainly for fun.  I don't really have any reason to be culturing this currently, but since I was already paying for shipping for the S. major culture, I figured I might as well throw this in there too.  You never know

JimWelsh
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Thursday, April 18, 2013 12:42 PM
I'm interested to see how these do for you.  What do you plan to feed them?

shannpeach
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Thursday, April 18, 2013 1:58 PM
I actually don't really know yet
 
Carolina sent along a culture manual that has recipes for their media used and culturing tips, so I will read that first.  I will probably also do quite a bit of googling.  The website says Alga-grow seawater is a the medium.  Brief googling of culture for Gymnodinium sp shows cultures that are done only with the media and light, so I don't know if I will "feed" them in a typical sense.  I may split the culture I have now in to two, feed one phyto or something, and only use MicroAlgae Grow and light for the other and see if either works.  
 
This paper http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1003161520584#page-1 utilized chicken manure, and lucky for me, my mom has chickens so I could actually give that a bit of a try if I was feeling ambitious.

dave w
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Monday, December 16, 2013 12:00 AM
I'm also curious to know how long they cultured for you, and if they crashed.  Do you have an update?

shannpeach
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Monday, December 16, 2013 8:41 AM
Hmmmm...it's already hard for me to remember.  I don't think they crashed out; I think I ended up having to steal the airline spot to use for something else (it seems like I am always running short on available airline ports!) I plan to start some again, but will probably wait until I have some larvae or something that I think will benefit from them.  It's just too much work right now to maintain another culture of something that I don't actually have a need for yet

dave w
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Monday, December 16, 2013 10:00 PM
I understand completely.  I was just wondering how long the culture lasted for you but my memory also started to become hazy the last few years.  It's just that this specie is known as mixotrophic, it grows on light through photosynthesis but also captures small protozoa and ciliates.  I wondered how long it would grow on light and algae fertilizer compared to having ciliates to eat.  But no worries.

shannpeach
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Monday, January 20, 2014 2:34 PM
I have some gymnodinium headed my way this week, so I will be starting this journal back up.  I have spent some time looking up some papers about culturing this species and it seems most of the papers utilize batch cultures.  This is a possibility for me, the only problem is harvesting for larvae.  How do I harvest them then? I have a 27uM mesh sieve, and I think I will order some 10uM as well so I will have that, but at least one paper has said that this is so delicate they didn't even aerate the cultures... so will using mesh just destroy/kill it before it can be fed to the larvae?  I wouldn't want to dump the culture water directly into the larval container, so I am going to have to sieve it I think...Anyone have any other ideas or info?  

dave w
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Monday, January 20, 2014 8:47 PM
I was under the impression that these were relatively large.  We're talking about the dinoflagellate, yes?  I thought they were on the order of 120 microns or so in size.  

shannpeach
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Monday, January 20, 2014 10:33 PM
I am writing this from my phone so it will be hard to reference some of the papers I read/came across today, but one ( http://www.int-res.com/ar...meps/158/m158p075.pdf) actually refers to a dinoflagellate over 20uM as "large" so I think they are smaller than 120uM by a bit. G. catenatum is 27-42uM x 34-65 and G. breve is 20-40 x 10-15uM based on the bit of googling I did about them. I am not sure the exact species I am getting and I'm sure there is a lot of size variation...but I am definitely hoping for something on the smaller side.

dave w
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Monday, January 20, 2014 11:08 PM
You are very likely right and it has been a while since I researched them, but from what I remember the Gymnodium labelled in the trade is usually sanguineum and is called a different name by the scientific community (something beginning with A).  Perhaps my memory is wrong but I recall them being much larger than 20um.  By the way, from what I remember, they can do well without high light levels, they eat phyto although they are photosynthetic themselves.  They appeared to be relatively easy to culture.  Famous last words.

shannpeach
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Tuesday, January 21, 2014 8:06 AM
Right?  
 
I am hoping the actual culturing won't be too difficult, but I am more worried about the harvesting.  Or do I just treat this like a phyto?  When I go to feed larvae do I just dump a bit of the dense Gymno culture in? That makes me a bit nervous, but it seems like sieving may damage the Gymno, so....

shannpeach
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Monday, January 27, 2014 9:56 AM
Okay, got my new cultures on Friday (1-24-2014); they were in the shipping box (and COLD) for about three days, but fingers crossed they do alright:


 

EasterEggs
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Monday, January 27, 2014 10:09 AM
Quote Originally Posted by shannpeach
When I go to feed larvae do I just dump a bit of the dense Gymno culture in? That makes me a bit nervous, but it seems like sieving may damage the Gymno, so....

 
Collect some larvae you don't need and give it a try?  Theoretically, if you harvest at peak and all the medium is used up then it should be clean, right?
 
I've not heard of using a dinoflagellate as a larval food.  Which species of larvae utilize dinos?
Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]

shannpeach
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Monday, January 27, 2014 10:29 AM
Priolepis...I read a paper about P. nocturna (I think that was the species) that only had Gymnodinium in their stomachs and had been fed wild sorted plankton.  I have P. hipoliti larvae and figured I would try the Gymnodinium.  I had a hatch this weekend, but they hatched with the H. elegans shrimp larvae and I chose to just set them up as a shrimp larval culture rather than try to separate the goby larvae out.  They are super hard to catch with a pipet or baster.

shannpeach
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 6:57 PM
Here are some pics I took on 3-5-2014 of this culture


 

shannpeach
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 7:04 PM
Pic from 4-13-2014


shannpeach
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Re:Culture Journal, Species: Gymnodinium sp. - Thursday, April 17, 2014 8:31 PM
Tetraselmis took these over! Aaaahhhhh! Bummer!