Reef Discussion
What are you doing with the rots to crash them? I set my Rotifers up about 12 months ago, and have never had a problem. I'm not doing anything special, it really amazed me how easy it actually is.
Here's the basics.
Salinity: 1.019, they will live at other salinity's, but this is a good compromise of low enough salinity that they will multiply quickly, and not go into shock when added to normal salinity tank water.
Temp: room temp is fine, as long as the water is not freezing, they will still multiply.
Harvest at least 25% of the rotifers daily and replace at least 25% of the water daily. If using tank water from water changes or NSW, make sure it has been sterilised, bleach, chlorine or microwave, all work fine, if you use bleach or chlorine, make sure you dechlorinate.
Don't over feed, I know everything you've read says "Do NOT let the rotifers ever run out of food", but trust me, It's better to let them run out of food, then over feed and wipe out the whole culture.
Clean your culture containers when they get dirty, to give you a rough idea, the rotifers I feed yeast to, require the bucket cleaning weekly, the rotifers I feed live phyto too, require cleaning twice a week.
Don't contaminate the cultures with water from your tanks, always wash your hands/tools before touching the cultures.
Finally, forget about culture density, 5 per ml or 25 per ml, it doesn't matter, once you harvest the rotifers and place them into a fry tank at 28c with live pyhto, they WILL multiply, I normally add about 6L of sieved rotifers on hatch night to the tank with 450-500 fry, I don't normally need to add any more rotifers again until day 5, just add phyto daily to keep the water tinted nice and green, and it will take care of it self.
Hope this helps,
Dave
OMG, my daughter caught some baby fish EXACTLY like these in a rock pool at the beach 2 weeks ago!!!! I was intrigued and spent some time looking at them in her hands because they were so different to the usual baby fish you see in tidal pools and I was kicking myself for not having my nano set up and running coz I wanted to take them home to see what they'd grow into!
I had 2 x 20l buckets going - one is still going strong but I ended up with very few rotifers in the other - not entirely sure what happened.
I currently have the buckets sitting in my pond to try to maintain the temperature. The shed they are in is getting very cold overnight - it was close to zero a few nights ago. What should I do? If they get cold and I then put them in the fry tank at 27 won't they die from shock?
If I had too pick a reason for the crash this would probably be it - overfeeding.
I might have thought that the live phyto would have been cleaner ?? I am largely feeding yeast, with some phyto occassionally, and the buckets don't seem to be very dirty - I will have a closer look tomorrow.
This helps a lot - a guide as to how much liquid to sieve has been hard to find. I assume the phto needs to be at the same temperature as the tank to minimise shock?
What lighting schedule do you use?
Appreciate your help.
Cheers
Any chance something could be transferring water from the pond to the rotifer cultures, that could explain your crashes.
I'd easily have a 10-15c difference between the rotifers and the fry tank temperatures, never had any problems, if the difference is greater then that, spend 10 mins acclimatising the rotifers to the tank water.
I thought it would be too, but it is definitely not the case. I've never fed yeast and phyto at the same time, I would think if you are overfeeding even a little, the yeast would quickly foul the water when it got caught in the gunk that settles on the bottom/sides from the phyto. Could explain your problem, or I could be completely wrong. :)
I just pour the phyto into a 2l bottle, and throw it into the sump of my grow out system for 20 mins, that warms it up before adding to the fry tank. I run about 20L of water in the fry tank, and feed around 3.5L of phyto a day.
24hrs till meta.
Read some interesting articles on commercial breeding of rotifers yesterday. I doubt anyone doing it at home would follow the time intensive cleaning and sterilizing regimes they do, bit then again they were talking about normal densities of 600/ml which would make it more important. Interesting read though.
Thanks Dave, I really appreciate your help.
The lighting is an interesting one - some advocate 24 hour lighting until met, others state that the fry need their rest and a natural lighting cycle is best.
I guess it is one of those 'If it works for you...' type of things but what are you reasons for running 24 hour lighting ? Increased feeding time for the larvae?
One of the arguments I have read for having a normal cycle is that it allows the rotifers to recover whilst the larvae are asleep??
Any links @Brekel ?
I'm on my way to Lonny ATM and can't check, but one was http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/w3732e/w3732e0h.htm
My reason for 24hr lighting is pretty simple, the majority of info I read said that was how it was done, it worked for me, so I've just stuck with it.
As far as letting the rotifers recover goes, that's not something I've had to deal with, as I said earlier, I don't normally have to add any more rotifers until day 5.
Why don't you try putting some food colouring into the water. When it leaks through it ought to be visible.Finished cleaning out my second hand tank I bought a few months ago - sterilised, rinsed a few times, put it into position and filled with tap water to check my heater was set correctly and ... it leakedNot a big leak, just a small one which is going to be hard to find.
So, tomorrow night I will have to clean out one of the other tanks I just happened to buy yesterday :)
@Dr. Schell - how do you know how many rotifers to feed i.e. 1 litre or 2 litres ?? And, if I am feeding the rots on yeast and then gut loading the rots with nanno prior to feeding to the larvae how much nanno can I expect to use? I currently have 12 litres bubbling away but not sure if that will be enough.
Yes, a few things to report :)
I was looking for a way to light my nanno cultures - I had a few requirements: a nice bright light; efficient and with a wide enough spread so that I could light up lots of bottles.
I like DIY stuff and I also like playing around with LED's so I came up with this 'frame'
I had some aluminium tubing left over from some pool fencing; I bought 20 x 3W Neutral White 6,500K LED's from ebay for about $18; and used 3 LDD drivers and a 19V laptop power supply that I had on hand.
It has LED's on both sides so I can light up 2 rows of bottles at once :) And I can control it with my Arduino controller :)
Cheers
That is ingenious! Absolutely awesome. I love how you make it look so easy to throw some bits of wiring together and look! A very funky multi bottle stand with individual lighting! It makes me want to do it too :)
Thanks @ezza hopefully it does the job required as I am struggling to keep up the supply at the moment. I will be glad when a few more days have passed and I can stop feeding nanno and rots and try and build up my supplies.
@Brekel, I suppose you were really asking about the clownfish larvae :rolleyes
On the one hand, I need to report that I have crashed my other bucket of rotifers - I suspect that I have been overfeeding. Interesting, I was looking in one bucket this afternoon and saw a fully grown brine shrimp swimming around :eek The only thing I can think of is that I emptied a packet of brine shrimp eggs into a container during the week - somehow one of the eggs must have found its way into the bucket :confused:
Normally, this crash would have been a disaster but whether by good luck or good fortune there is some good news. For the first few days I was putting a fair few rotifers in the larvae tank as I was not sure how many were required. Thankfully, I now have the tank teeming with rotifers - which is basically how @Dave001 suggested it should be done :)
You can see some of the rotifers in the photo's below - the pictures aren't the best but you get the idea :)
At 3 DPH they are quite active - I took some video today but most of it is out of focus so I need to do some heavy editing - the rotifers are very evident in the video. I am very happy to report that there were no deaths in the past 24 hours. There are probably still around 30-40 remaining.
Planning on getting some brine shrimp started tomorrow so I will have some to feed on Monday night.
@Brekel, I suppose you were really asking about the clownfish larvae :rolleyes
On the one hand, I need to report that I have crashed my other bucket of rotifers - I suspect that I have been overfeeding. Interesting, I was looking in one bucket this afternoon and saw a fully grown brine shrimp swimming around :eek The only thing I can think of is that I emptied a packet of brine shrimp eggs into a container during the week - somehow one of the eggs must have found its way into the bucket :confused:
Normally, this crash would have been a disaster but whether by good luck or good fortune there is some good news. For the first few days I was putting a fair few rotifers in the larvae tank as I was not sure how many were required. Thankfully, I now have the tank teeming with rotifers - which is basically how @Dave001 suggested it should be done :)
You can see some of the rotifers in the photo's below - the pictures aren't the best but you get the idea :)
At 3 DPH they are quite active - I took some video today but most of it is out of focus so I need to do some heavy editing - the rotifers are very evident in the video. I am very happy to report that there were no deaths in the past 24 hours. There are probably still around 30-40 remaining.
Planning on getting some brine shrimp started tomorrow so I will have some to feed on Monday night.
Ocellaris are easy on your nanno supply, try breeding Premnas, we don't start on BBS until day 8. I have 85L of phyto growing just to supply a pair of fry tanks. :)
Just need to be a little more careful when feeding/harvesting, if brine shrimp have made it in, what else has? On the plus side, some people suggest keeping several adult brine shrimp in with the rotifers, when the brine shrimp die, you do a large water change, and hopefully save the rotifers from crashing.
That's good news for this hatch. :)
I personally wouldn't start a new culture from the rotifers in the fry tank. The fry tank will contain water from the brood stock tank, which will have all kinds of organisms growing in it, best to start with a clean source of rotifers.
If you need rotifers, I can help you out, just need to send me a self addressed express post satchel.
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