What to culture?

[Jeremy S.]

I've always been interested in culturing my own coral food, but what exactly do I need to be culturing and how?! I'm mostly looking for something for Zoanthids, Acans, Blastomussa, and mushrooms. I know the lighting a good I'm just curious about starting cultures.

 

[ccCapt]

Corals are meat eaters so you need to culture zooplankton. Artemia (baby brine shrimp) is probably the easiest to do, but you must also raise diatoms for them to feed on.
Brine Shrimp Culturing Guidelines | Frequently Asked Questions

 

[Gregcoyote]

Corals are meat eaters so you need to culture zooplankton. Artemia (baby brine shrimp) is probably the easiest to do, but you must also raise diatoms for them to feed on.
Brine Shrimp Culturing Guidelines | Frequently Asked Questions

Didn't you mean rotifers? That's what I fed my baby brine with. Start with green water, then raise enriched rotifers off of that, then feed newly hatched brine with the rotifers. Wasn't aware anything ate diatoms.

The key is in sterility. These cultures can crash easily if everything isn't kept just so. I think it is easier to breed and raise fish than it is to raise adult brine shrimp.

 

[Phranque]

Sounds like my venture into raising crickets to feed bearded dragons, all in the name of saving a couple $$..... WAY more trouble than it was worth.

 

[Mrc8858]

Sounds like my venture to raise crickets to feed bearded dragons just to save a couple $$..... WAY more trouble than it was worth.

Did the same for my snake but it was the complete opposite... My two snakes had trouble keeping up with a breeding trio (1/3) of mice haha but ya Ccapt I too thought it was rotifers?

 

[ccCapt]

Didn't you mean rotifers? That's what I fed my baby brine with. Start with green water, then raise enriched rotifers off of that, then feed newly hatched brine with the rotifers. Wasn't aware anything ate diatoms.
...

From the article I posted....
"The preferred feed for artemia is cultured, live diatoms. A number of species have been used successfully, including Nannochloropsis sp., Tetraselmis sp., and Dunaliella sp. Providing live diatoms, of course, entails a duplicate effort commensurate with the number of artemia to be fed. As stated before, brine shrimp are continuous feeders and, at high densities, quickly clear water of diatoms."

 

[Gregcoyote]

http://m.wikihow.com/Raise-Brine-Shrimp

I never heard of feeding them diatoms. But who knows? I didn't think diatoms contained much nutrition.

 

[jetajockey]

Ive seen some writeups that utilize phytoplankton. I'm attempting to grow some out now with a slurry of odds and ends, as ive read that brine shrimp nonselectively filter feed. We'll see how that turns out over a few weeks.

One other thing I've done is left some old wc water outside in the sun for a few weeks (its warm here) only to find it swarming with pods when I check it again.

 

[Gregcoyote]

Pods are a good food source and I think much easier to raise than adult shrimp.

 

[Jeremy S.]

Anyone have any books for reference on cultures?!

 

[Gregcoyote]

There is some good stuff on the web as well as YouTube.

 

[jetajockey]

A Primer on Live Food Cultures - Aquarium Advice This one goes over some of them.