Infusoria Culture

[Ben C.]

I started an infusoria culture 3 days ago with a piece of boiled lettuce and a glass bowl, and placed it on my window shelf to grow infusoria. Day three and its just moderately cloudy and has a thick film on the surface. Am I on the right track or has it stalled? Thank you!

[Fish Folk]

On 6/20/2021 at 1:56 PM, benchilton said:

I started an infusoria culture 3 days ago with a piece of boiled lettuce and a glass bowl, and placed it on my window shelf to grow infusoria. Day three and its just moderately cloudy and has a thick film on the surface. Am I on the right track or has it stalled? Thank you!

I assume you used cycled tank water, not the boiled water - correct?

The process is to get bacteria native in cycled tank water to bloom, and thereby feed infusoria that eat the bacteria and multiply more slowly. So, you boil greens to begin breaking them down — but you use _tank water_ which imports both bacteria and infusoria.

One trick is to squeeze out a sponge filter to get loads of both bacteria and infusoria. Try squeezing your sponge out in a pail of tank water, then squeezing it out again a second time into a quart-size container full of tank water. Allow mulm to settle. Infusoria + bacteria should populate the upper 1/2 of your container. This can be added to another container with pre-boiled lettuce + a few pieces of floating plants (which will house more micro life).

The cloudiness that should come if placed in a sunlit window is bacteria bloom. But it’s clearing up is the infusoria eating it away. With a strong magnifying lens and good light, you can probably see them. Suck those up with a pipette, liquid med syringe, or something similar.

[Ben C.]

Gotcha! I did use tank water, but it was just straight from the tank. I will get another container and try the sponge approach, my sponges could use a good squeeze out anyway lol...thanks! 

[KentFishFanUK]

Is there some way to save this thread to refer to later? I can see myself doing this at some point! Thanks everyone

[gardenman]

On 7/9/2021 at 5:02 AM, KentFishFanUK said:

Is there some way to save this thread to refer to later? I can see myself doing this at some point! Thanks everyone

You can email it to yourself. If you click on the three dot thing at the top right you'll get a "Share" option. Among the share options are email.  You can then email the thread to yourself so you have it available when needed.

[KentFishFanUK]

On 7/9/2021 at 2:08 PM, gardenman said:

You can email it to yourself. If you click on the three dot thing at the top right you'll get a "Share" option. Among the share options are email.  You can then email the thread to yourself so you have it available when needed.

Perfect solution thanks!

[BriannesFishFam]

I personally think the sponge method is key. The sponge sucks in and hold all of the detritus and fish waste, small pieces of dead plants, etc etc. So yes, I agree with Fish Folk that you should retry with a bowl of tank water and ring out a reasonable number of sponge filters into the bowl, try and pick the one you haven't cleaned in a while. Say you have tank A and Tank B, if you take water from Tank A and clean the sponge filter from tank B, and tank A has an illness (Ich, Fungal, Internal Parasite, etc) that you didn't know about, now you could potentially seed Tank B's sponge filter with Tank A's disease, if one happens to be present. I actually think I accidentally did this one time. I had two 10 gallon side by side and they had the same brand, style, and color of filter (I believe it was a Hikari Sponge filter (the ones that go in the corner) and I was cleaning then both in water from 10 Gallon "A" 's water and I think I accidentally switched filter because I had a huge loss of guppies in both tanks due to a fungal infection and within a few days almost all of them were dead even with temperament, it was too late. Good luck!

 

Bri