Is this a good price estimate for rotifer cultures?

[Tankkeepers]

Before handling clean from your elbows down

 

[Tankkeepers]

Good luck and dont be deterred as alot of people keep cultures without any problems at all

 

[ichthyogeek]

Yes on the shared heating tub. If the 1 micron sieve is too slow, I have no beef using a 53 micron sieve for the rotifers and skipping it entirely for the algae. By the way...how much algae do rotifers need for a decent culture? I was hearing 60,000,000-70,000,000 cells per ml, which seems impossible to meet without absurd amounts of algae paste or enormous algae cultures...is that the figure for industrial production with thousands of rotifers per ml rather than the usual figure in the hundreds for hobbyist cultures?

EDIT: I forgot...I am finally taking definite steps towards actually getting a saltwater tank Getting 50 gallon's worth of marine salt at petco this morning in a curbside pickup. I will most likely get it in bulk on chewy in the future for cost reasons (unless I cannot find anywhere to store that much salt), but it's a start! I decided that if I did not do something decisive soon, I would never get rolling at all.

The plankton bible

The fish bible

A lot of the troubleshooting questions you'll have can be answered by reading these two books. As for thousands of rotifers/mL, I believe that's supposed to be standard practice for intensive culture; there's low density (I think 10-300 rots/mL) and then high density (300-5000/mL). There's also ultra high density (5000+/mL), but that's unsustainable long term, and requires a lot of fine tuning.

60-70M cells/mL does seem quite high. I was able to get Rhodomonas counts to 1.1M cells/mL. But it's also dependent on the phyto in question that you're culturing. Nannochloropsis and Isochrysis I'm fairly sure can have much higher cell densities than Rhodo.

@Reef Nutrition , comments on the optimum algal stocking density for rotifers?

 

[Reef Nutrition]

Rotifers are voracious animals - a single (L) strain rotifer will consume about 115,000 cells of Nannochloropsis sp. each day.

 

[ThRoewer]

Hi everyone! Here is a question that I do not need a scientific article to answer...I was creating a price check to estimate how much it would cost for me to keep up with two 1 gallon rotifer cultures. How does this sound?

Costs for two 1 gallon rotifer jars;
- 15 watt heater; .26
- Isochrysis culture; about $1.02 (if water is recycled)*
- Air pump (4 watt, 2 lines); .21
- 19.5 liters DI water (twice weekly 30% WC's, assuming new water is used); $.48
- 40 TBS instant ocean (using Chewy to acquire the salt); $1.18

TOTAL;$3.15 (assuming the rotifers use new salt water and the isochrysis uses recycled water...in all fairness, if I did 30% WC's twice a week on these rotifer cultures I could easily recycle enough water from them for double the below amount of Isochrysis or even to start cultures of a different algae species)

*Monthly Isochrysis culture costs (for two 2 liter cultures);
- BR20 LED light bulb (6 watts, 12 hrs/day); .16
- 1 gallon saltwater/week (1/2 gallon per culture); Nothing? (if I already have a
saltwater tank. A 1 micron filter sock and/or .4 ml bleach per gallon for 30 minutes
would be used to sterilize the water. Bleach/sodium thiosulfate reaction is
4 NaOCl (bleach) + Na2S2O3 (dechlor) + 2 NaOH → 4 NaCl + 2 Na2SO4 + H2O). May add
baking soda to the water as an inorganic carbon source; .15 ml baking soda
adds 1.2 degrees KH to one gallon of water.
-If I REUSE old tank water;
*Sodium thiosulfate; Trivial
*Bleach; Trivial
-If I DO make new water;
* Salt; .74
* DI water; about .2
- Glycerin (about .5 ml/gallon, 10 oz=226.19 grams); about .05 (may also add glycerin
to Iso being kept in fridge to give it an energy source)
- F/2 fertilizer; about .34
- 4 watt air pump; .21
- 15 watt heater; .26

TOTAL; About $1.02 (assuming water is recycled from display)
- If water is made new, $1.96

One other thing...is there any particular reason I could not harvest the rotifers and/or algae on a 1 micron sieve before using them? I would think, assuming that did not kill or mortally wound the rotifers/algae, that this would reduce nutrient accumulation inside the larval tank by keeping nutrients (especially from the algae cultures) out of the tank. Thanks for your input

Why Isochrysis?
For Brachionus I would go with Nannochloropsis, grows faster, gets denser, and has the right nutritional profile.

Btw, I got finally my phytoplankton station up:

 

[ichthyogeek]

Why Isochrysis?
For Brachionus I would go with Nannochloropsis, grows faster, gets denser, and has the right nutritional profile.

Btw, I got finally my phytoplankton station up:

I WANT ONE

Also, OP was going to eventually try and culture Parvocalanus, hence Isochrysis.

 

[ThRoewer]

I WANT ONE

Also, OP was going to eventually try and culture Parvocalanus, hence Isochrysis.

I will make a thread about it once it's completely done and debugged.

As for Isochrysis as feed for rotifers - you would need to culture a lot of it to feed them. He will have to add RGcomplete to keep up with them.