Bryozoan care

[Mickle]

Anyone here have success or experience in keeping bryozoans? Any specifics they need to live? I recently collected a branching type to experiment with. I cant find much information besides the fact they suspension feed, Im going to try various sizes of phytoplankton (1μm and up). Any advice or extra info would be appreciated :slightly-smiling-face:

 

[BristleWormHater]

@ISpeakForTheSeas is how I found out about bryozoans, he should be able to help you out.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

@ISpeakForTheSeas is how I found out about bryozoans, he should be able to help you out.

No personal experience with these yet, but some care notes from lab experiments culturing them:

to try feeding them (or to try growing them):

“Common microalgal genera used for feeding bryozoans include Dunaliella, Rhodomonas, Tetraselmis, and Pavlova. It is important to supply appropriate cell concentrations of the cultured microalgae to the bryozoan tank, taking into account the dilution volume of the tank itself. Feeding can be done by manual daily additions of cultured cells, or ideally, by a drip feed system, which can be applied both to closed and flow-through systems.”*

Feeding them where they’re at could be a bit tough, but you might be able to target feed them, or you might be able to setup something like a little tube with a funnel that drops the phyto out nearby for the bryozoans to feed on (they make a little current by beating their feeding tentacles - their lophophores - and that current brings the food to their mouth).**

*Source:

Collecting and Culturing Bryozoans for Regenerative Studies

Among marine invertebrates, bryozoans are small, not well known, and complex to identify. Nevertheless, they offer unique opportunities for whole-body generation research, because of their colonial, modular mode of growth. Here, we describe detailed methods for...

link.springer.com

**Source and just some cool info about bryozoans:
https://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-10/rs/index.php

 

[Mickle]

No personal experience with these yet, but some care notes from lab experiments culturing them:

Thank you for the paper! Drip feeding throughout the day sounds interesting, I might look into that

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Thank you for the paper! Drip feeding throughout the day sounds interesting, I might look into that

Let us know how it goes - not many people purposefully keep these, but they're really cool critters.

 

[Mickle]

Let us know how it goes - not many people purposefully keep these, but they're really cool critters.

I will give updates if anything noteworthy happens :slightly-smiling-face: I have ID'd the bryozoan to be 'Amathia alternata' Im excited to see how it does

 

[Mickle]

I just noticed there is new growth on the bryozoa! Looks like its doing good :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes: