Culture Journal, Species: Brachionus plicatus

General
Species:  Brachionus plicatus
Species description:  L-type marine rotifer
Culture source (link if possible):  Reed Mariculture
If algae, CCMP # (Optional): 
http://ccmp.bigelow.edu/
Culture Establishment Date:  5/29/13
Continuation Date:  8/31/13

Culturing Vessel Details
Salinity:  1.018
Temperature:    ambient room temp, 70-73 degrees F
pH:  not measured

Vessel description:  Five gallon (US) plastic bucket
Lighting description:  no direct lighting, will get some ambient light from other tanks & phytoplankton culture lights
Lighting cycle: 
Aeration description:  rigid airliine with gentle bubble rate

Methodologies
Split methodology:

Culture medium description:  
Established with new saltwater at SG 1.018, tinted light green with RotiGrow Plus and live nannochloropsis.  Filterfloss pad hanging inside of bucket.

Cell count:
 (if known)

Reference links:  

Additional Information
(No Pictures or Videos in the Section Please)
Notes: 



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.

Some pics of the new culture as it arrived.
The rotifers still bagged, backlit by new main tank...

 
And the culture bucket...

 
Now to buy a simple USB microscope so I can actually look at these critters!  ANd I need a bigger fish room....

More aeration!  Double what your doing now.
 
Get yourself a Sedgewick-Rafter counting slide once you get the scope.  Then you can count your rotifers and be a step above most hobbyist breeders.  If you don't count, you really are flying by the seat of your pants.

Thanks for the input - I'll ramp up the airflow.  The water was much lighter this morning, so RG was added (I'm planning twice a day feeding).  I was surprised by this since the culture was so new.

I short video with my iPhone showing my first harvest (about 25%).  Interesting the way they congregate in clusters.  They can be seen swimming even without magnification (much more detail on my iPhone in hi def, but I didn't want to eat up too bandwidth just for this!)
 

Seeded my outdoor tub today after cleaning my indoor culture bucket. I used 2 gallons old existing culture to continue the indoor bucket, and added about 3 gallons NSW at 1.018 SG. I harvested the other 3 gallons to place in my outdoor tub. It is an old 5 gallon Rubbermaid container that has my excess chaetomorpha that I thin from my refugium. I have adjusted the SG down to 1.020 for the rotifers.

Trying to get some photo evidence for continuation.  I'm realizing how lousy my microscope image capture software is - the pics look much better on the screen, but when I save them, really crummy resolution.  My iphone video looks better than the still!
 

Here's the pic at 60x mag with my Celestron USB scope..... I have to get some better software, my screen capture is a lousy 640x480.

Ok, I finally got a decent microscope! Here is a pic of my rotifers at 32x magnification. I took this with my iphone held up to the ocular.