How to culture phyto and rotifers

Reef Breeders · Jan 21, 2011

Alright, so the fist thing you want to do is store the rotifers in your fridge. They will last around three weeks, plenty of time to start a phyto culture to feed them with. To start with the phyto, funnel a whole or half bottle of phyto into a two liter bottle (you should start at least two cultures of this size), and fill it abou 3/4 of the way with water with a salinity between 1.019 and 1.026, I keep mine at 1.022, its easier to mix the salt at that level without calculating a specific amount that youll need extra tools to measure. Drill a 1/4 hole in the bottle cap, put some airline through the hole, and put a small air stone on the end of the air line (glass or wood is fine, I use glass), this should weigh the airline down, make sure that the air stone is on the bottom of the bottle, this allows both circulation and air flow. Keep the cap on half way so that air can escape, but be careful, the water may rise over the top, and you may have to adjust the airflow so that there is moderate air movement but minimal water rising. You can use a household style florescent tube to light both bottles, I use two 15 watt bulbs, one white, one blue. The phyto is photosynthetic, and does not need supplementation, but there are feltalizers that can boost the speed of growth. You can find them cheapest on ebay, but I dont use anything other than a light and airline. When the culture is a dark brown green and doesnt darken for two days, it is ready to feed a rotifer culture. I just started my own phyto culture, but my highschool cultures them to feed fish fry, so that is where I got most of my info. The rest of the info I got from breedclownfish.com

Reef Breeders · Jan 21, 2011

Once your phyto culture is ready, pour one or two bottles of my rotifers into a five gallon bucket with the same salinity as the phyto culture, mentioned above. Keep the rots away from your phyto culture, one rotifer will make short work of your culture as it multiplies into the millions. Once the rotifers are in the bucket, add a large airstone to circulate the rotifers, and put in a half cup of your phyto culture in each day from now on, and after three days, strain about a third of your rotifers through a rotifer seive (you can find one on ebay or a coffee filter will do just fine) every day BEFORE you feed your culture, even when you're not feeding fry, this allows the rotifers room to multiply. If you strain after feeding, than you are also going to remove some of the food, and this will slow the rotifers growth. Rotifers are multicellular, three cells to be exact, and are non photosynthetic, so you can keep them anywhere, so long as they are below or away from the phyto culture. Good luck, and I may be selling brine shrimp eggs soon too, but I will see how well I can raise those guys.
Most of my info on rotifers is from personal experience and breedclownfish.com