Rotifer Cultures Outside?

[tanglovers]

Hi All,

I am looking at starting to culture rotifers. I have been looking into the different ways of doing this and want it to b the as lowest maintenance/upkeep as possible.

I am intrigued by what J. Wilkerson dicusses in her clownfish book (Clownfishes) about culturing her rotifers outside. I am located in Michigan so I think I would have similar results as her. Sounds like she does not have any airstones running in there except for when it gets real hot outside.

Any suggestions/opinions about this type of rotifer culturing?

Thanks!

[clownfish75]

HOw will you be feeding them? where will your algae cultures be?

Christian

[tanglovers]

Algae cultures are currently running inside. Wilkerson explains that she keeps her outdoor cultures outside and feeds greenwater when she needs a boost in rotifer growth for a clownfish clutch. Otherwise the rotifer culture seems self maintain off of the microalgael blooms from natural sunlight.

She explains her method on p. 171-174 in the Clownfishes book of hers.

Looking for opinions/suggestions.

[clownfish75]

i cant see why it wouldnt work, but i dont know about the self sustaining nature of the cultures, think they might crash then take a fair time to come up when feeding resumes.

If you can maintain the temp you should be ok

Christian

[mano]

I kind of tried this on a really small scale. I stocked a small fish bowl with rotifers ( afew thousand I guess) and stuck them out on my porch and pretty much did nothing with them. I would check them occasionally and they were definitely still alive and probably reproducing at some rate. I didn't feed them and stuff landed in the bowl and we got some rain water in there and they were still ok. After a few weeks I guess they kind of died off though and I dumped it. Not sure that was that helpful for you but that's what I did.

[jacob30]

I kept a 110 gallon stock tank outside last summer/fall and the rotifers did fine. They were not at inside culture concentrations but you could get a fair number if you siphoned off a larger quanity of water. I did not feed them. Every once in a while I would put in some waste saltwater to keep salinity at normal levels. It is in fact still out side. I need to go check it.

Amazingly there are brine shrimp and rotifers at very low concentrations (about 40 deg water).

[ediaz]

Well that happened by accident it is something that can't be reproduced, like culturing phyto etc.

I beleive you want them for a reef tank, you can try to run something like that, low maint. inside also.

I can hook you up with some to start if you need some.

What are you going to do when it's -1000 degrees in our beautiful town?

Ed

[FFFrog]

I started some last spring in a 20 gallon tube. They did fine all summer and fall. I fed them every couple of days with phyto. They did good until it hit about 40 outside. The temparture did get up to about 90 a few times in the summer and they still did fine.

[rareclownfish]

I have seen this one work first hand, you have the whole concept right just follow Wilkerson and you won't have a lot of probs low maintenance.

[marinebetta]

FWIW, I keep my cultures outside...but my external environment would be alittle different from most of you:)

I have my cultures in covered salt buckets - covered to keep the rain out. Tried the Wilkinson way but really didn't get any success...our rains and evaporation played havoc with the culture. The culture buckets are in full sun for part of the day (that's tropical sun!) so the temps can get above 30 C easily - often feels warm to the touch. Still, the culture grows well if I keep up the harvesting and water changes every few days....

....and they aren't aerated....

Seems to work for me...but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone if it was their only culture.