Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer)

Author Message
shannpeach
  • Total Posts : 955
  • Reward points : 676
  • Joined: 5/30/2012
  • Location: Milwaukee, WI, US
Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Thursday, April 24, 2014 8:23 AM
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:  Colurella adriatica
Species description:  Tiny rotifer
Culture source (link if possible):  Unknown, found it while size sorting 
If algae, CCMP # (Optional): 
http://ccmp.bigelow.edu/
Culture Establishment Date:  4-18-2014
Continuation Date: 

Culturing Vessel Details
Salinity:  ~1.023 currently, slowly lowering it
Temperature:    Room temperature
pH:  Unknown

Vessel description:  500mL bottle right now
Lighting description:  Ambient light from southern facing window
Lighting cycle:  Sunrise to sunset
Aeration description:  Rigid airline tubing, consistent bubble--not a boil

Methodologies
Split methodology:

Culture medium description: 
I try to keep the culture container lightly tinted with either RG complete, or live phyto (tetraselmis or nanno so far, but I also have Iso and Dunaliella available that will be fed at some point)

Cell count:
 (if known)

Reference links:  
http://risingtideconserva...l-aquaculture-lab.html
Additional Information
(No Pictures or Videos in the Section Please)
Notes: 
I found this glorious little critter while size sorting for small ciliates to try to feed to some tiny fish larvae.  I found them in a S. scutellatus larval rearing container (3L).  I first put the water through a 120uM mesh sieve and caught the bbs, then I put it multiple times through a 53uM mesh sieve to catch the ciliates and any rotifers/copepods.  Last, I put the water through a 27uM mesh sieve, backwashed, and found these  

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 Thursday, April 24, 2014 12:30 PM>

shannpeach
  • Total Posts : 955
  • Reward points : 676
  • Joined: 5/30/2012
  • Location: Milwaukee, WI, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Thursday, April 24, 2014 8:34 AM
Here is a link to when I first found this critter
http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/tm.aspx?m=90508
Some pics from that thread:



 
Last night I did some more size sorting from left over larval water and found more:



 
I also have a video but I'm having trouble getting it to upload.  I will post it when I get it to work :/
 

DThom
  • Total Posts : 43
  • Reward points : 1252
  • Joined: 11/5/2009
  • Location: Flower Mound, TX, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Thursday, April 24, 2014 12:14 PM
Pretty cool!  What are you feeding them?

shannpeach
  • Total Posts : 955
  • Reward points : 676
  • Joined: 5/30/2012
  • Location: Milwaukee, WI, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Thursday, April 24, 2014 12:20 PM
Well, they got a mix of live phyto and RG complete before I realized I had them lurking in culture containers, so now that I am trying to create specific culture for them I am trying to do the same foods that worked well enough before.  I have given them live tetraselmis, live nannochloropsis and RG complete since I started working on a monoculture.  
 
Here http://risingtideconserva...l-aquaculture-lab.html  they used nanno paste and live phytos and that seemed to work, so fingers crossed!

DThom
  • Total Posts : 43
  • Reward points : 1252
  • Joined: 11/5/2009
  • Location: Flower Mound, TX, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Thursday, April 24, 2014 12:37 PM
Thanks for the information.  I look forward to following your progress with these, and I hope you are able to get a full culture going!

mPedersen
  • Total Posts : 3450
  • Reward points : 1376
  • Joined: 2/27/2009
  • Location: Duluth, MN, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Friday, April 25, 2014 5:33 PM
Good luck.  How sure are you on the actual ID?

shannpeach
  • Total Posts : 955
  • Reward points : 676
  • Joined: 5/30/2012
  • Location: Milwaukee, WI, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Friday, April 25, 2014 9:28 PM
Pretty sure. Nearly positive it's Colurella but I suppose the species will always be hard to nail down 100%. I found this rotifer species chapter in a textbook that I plan to look at more closely. I'm hoping as the culture gets going (if it does) I will have more specimens to look at under the scope. So far though, everything I have seen supports C. adriatica

shannpeach
  • Total Posts : 955
  • Reward points : 676
  • Joined: 5/30/2012
  • Location: Milwaukee, WI, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Monday, April 28, 2014 12:43 PM
These guys are turning into little buggers to culture.  The problem is when I sieve size-sort for them, I also get a lot of ciliates that are around the same size.  Grrr.  Anyone know of a way to get rid of ciliates that are the same size as your rotifers?  I would like to try to isolate individual cells but I'm not exactly sure how to go about doing that with the equipment I have at home.  I'm going to keep thinking about it.  Perhaps if I had a dissecting scope...

shannpeach
  • Total Posts : 955
  • Reward points : 676
  • Joined: 5/30/2012
  • Location: Milwaukee, WI, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Monday, April 28, 2014 12:46 PM
I'm also trying to figure out which of my other cultures this came from.  I found it in the Stenopus larval bottle, so it could be from one of my other rotifer cultures or any of my copepod cultures.  So far I have ruled out the S rots by doing a thoroughly size sort and microscope check.  Next to check will be the Apocyclops I think.

shannpeach
  • Total Posts : 955
  • Reward points : 676
  • Joined: 5/30/2012
  • Location: Milwaukee, WI, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Monday, April 28, 2014 11:06 PM
After doing some reading today, I found a paper about culturing Euplotes. They found that Euplotes don't culture using Microalgae alone and did far better on yeast diets. This is good news for me since I could now take half the bottle and only feed live phyto to encourage just the Colurella rots and the other half could be set up as a culture fed mainly roti-rich or some other yeast based diet to culture mainly ciliates. Worth a shot! I will try to get this set up tomorrow. I'll probably have to do some culture station rearranging first, though.

KathyL
  • Total Posts : 2639
  • Reward points : 1504
  • Joined: 6/6/2010
  • Location: St. Louis, MO, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 3:22 PM
Cool!
check out Kathy's Clowns, llc website:
http://kathysclowns.com
Captive bred clownfish and more
(Wholesale to the trade.)

shannpeach
  • Total Posts : 955
  • Reward points : 676
  • Joined: 5/30/2012
  • Location: Milwaukee, WI, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 9:05 PM
Tonight I tried to use a pipet and my regular scope to try for mainly the rotifers. I maybe got ten and have them in a small container now. There are still ciliates because my "method" was nowhere near precise. This weekend I may try a dissecting scope since there is one in my work building that I was told I could use.

shannpeach
  • Total Posts : 955
  • Reward points : 676
  • Joined: 5/30/2012
  • Location: Milwaukee, WI, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Friday, May 23, 2014 9:33 PM
Well, my attempt to get a culture going failed. One turned into a ciliate culture and the other a regular rotifer culture.

But...this evening I found out where they came from (in my house). My Tigriopus cultures! Tomorrow I plan to size sort for them and try to get a monoculture going again. I also got a dissecting scope, so that should help.

shannpeach
  • Total Posts : 955
  • Reward points : 676
  • Joined: 5/30/2012
  • Location: Milwaukee, WI, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Sunday, May 25, 2014 9:14 PM
I size sorted a Tigriopus culture and got more colurella. There didn't seem to be very many ciliates, so I didn't bother trying to use the dissecting scope and pipet individual rots to start a pure culture. I have them in a 250 mL bottle with live tetraselmis right now. I will probably add a small amount of Iso tonight or tomorrow as well. I read that they culture well on nanno, but I don't have any anymore. I'll work on slowly brings the salinity down to 20 ppt. Right now it's at 35 ppt.

Jake
  • Total Posts : 129
  • Reward points : 140
  • Joined: 2/14/2015
  • Location: Mikado, MI, US
Re:Culture Journal, Species: Colurella adriatica (rotifer) - Monday, April 27, 2015 3:42 PM
Any update/progress on these ?
Jake
We are all in this together