Size of newly hatched rotifers?

How big are newly hatched rotifers?  I can't for the life of me find this info.  I know we use 53 micron sieves to harvest, but does that catch them all??  I need to sieve rotifers out of my copepod cultures. 

Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]

Wouldn't it just be easier to starve them out?  I feel like rotifer sizes overlap a lot with copepods sizes

 
That's what I've been doing, but they keep coming back - I think from eggs??  I know if I sieve out the copepods I will lose lots of nauplii, but I don't see another choice.

Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]

Yeah, probably from eggs.  If you starve them out, then decant/siphon out the copepods, you could probably (or maybe not!) get rid of them that way.  
 
But if you go the sieving route, you want a sieve large enough to catch the adult copepods (ideally females with eggs) but let everything else go through, including rotifers and nauplii, right?  What kind of copepods?

Yes, just keep the females with the eggs.  They are Tigriopus.  I sieved them yesterday through a 180 micron sieve and rinsed them on the sieve really well.  I will do this again (and keep the water to see if more naups hatch from the females dropping eggs).
 
Stupid rotifers...they have wings!  I have better anti-contamination methods in place now.

Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]

Is 180 the largest mesh size you have? I would imagine a 180uM would still catch a lot of rots, particularly ones with eggs.

Maybe do a combination of really low feeding for the pods (or maybe only feed a flake feed for a week or something) to really starve the rots and that should help keep the rots small and with no eggs (if they are still alive!) and then do your super rinse on the 180 mesh...

Rots. Gotta love em AND hate em

I think I have some 400 micron mesh.  Didn't think to use that.  The Tigs are NOT impressed with the rough handling.

Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]

This doesn't exactly answer your original question, but I just measured some rotifer eggs


Not sure how much bigger they would get before hatching, and I am not sure if they are L or S (I was removing them since they are contaminants in a ciliate culture). They looked to be about 50 x 70uM

Thanks!

Don't let fear and common sense stop you! =]

Size depends on how you culture and feed them.
 
originally ours were ~250 lorica length but over the years our adults have gotten down to 160L.

But if they go head on, they are much smaller so some will always get through your sieve.  We use 43µm
 
FWIW don't use a "u" in place of µ

µ isn't on my phone keyboard.  I recognize the difference, but since I'm not writing in a scientific paper I use "u" as a substitute for ease of typing on my phone.

It's not on nearly everyone's keyboard, but its available on almost every OS out there.  Most phones also include a greek keyboard or a short-cut. 
 
Its not about writing a scientific paper, the usage of it I mean.  I personally feel if your going to use a scientific term, use it correctly or spell it out as micron and go the common way *like using common names instead of scientific*