Live foods are the foundation of my fish breeding efforts, but sometimes I really hate maintaining the cultures. Here's one way I found to reduce some of the work in keeping a paramecium culture long term.
FAQ: What's the difference between Paramecium and Infusoria? Courtesy of Wikipedia: "Infusoria is a word used to describe various freshwater microorganisms, including ciliates, copepods, euglenoids, planktonic crustaceans, protozoa, unicellular algae and small invertebrates [...] In modern, formal classifications, the term is considered obsolete; the microorganisms previously and colloquially referred to as Infusoria are mostly assigned to the kingdom Protista." How I would describe their relationship: Paramecium are one example of many organisms that fall into the category of Infusoria. The term, in our context, translates to "tiny stuff that grows in the water that baby fish might like to eat." I personally associate infusoria more to organisms on the order of ciliates than microcrustaceans. Add yeast or don't add yeast?: Adding yeast can help kick things off, you just have to be a little careful with the amount. Too much can turn the upper layer of the culture into soup and choke out the water beneath. Yeast also floats around in the air so it will inoculate the culture no matter what. In short, we're all using yeast whether we add it deliberately or not. What species of paramecium? I use Paramecium Caudatum specifically for their size. At 0.2-0.3 mm, they are the largest (at the time of this writing) offered by Carolina Biological Supply. They are small enough to be eaten easily by any fry I have worked with personally, yet are large enough to be clearly visible without magnification. This makes it easy to judge the state of a culture and the density of live organisms in a sample. This is in contrast to a broad, luck-of-the-draw infusoria culture where, depending on which species happen to dominate the culture, it might be hard to judge whether you have a useful food source or just cloudy, putrid water.
@@MakeMoreFish You put hot water and tea leaves in a tea pot so the tea can steep, the tea goes in a little basket that goes in the top (Google glass teapot for an easy image). A kettle makes hot water.
@@MakeMoreFish I didn't think about how America redefined established words, In English speaking countries a kettle boils water, a modern teapot has a basket for you to put loose leaf tea in to steep with the boiled water from the kettle.
Giant Nerd here, I culture paramecium, not for fish but for a group of aquatic carnivorous plants called utricularia and aldrovanda. Since I am a dyi guy I am going to try your method and see how it works for me.
I’m a carnivorous plant nerd culturing paramecium for fish. I can’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me that I was growing food for these plants. Time to order some plants lol
@@gabeoleinik4435 Glad I could help you further your collection of carnivorous plants since you already grow food for them. If you need help finding the plants let me know. I can tell you where to get them.
Hi Lowell! Just want to thank you for this great idea! Yes, I’m some kind of livefood and fish nerd 😊 You give me wonder ideas to use the material I hoard 😏🤩✌️
Dude, you make some of the best fish care videos I have seen on the internet. Thank you so much for the work you are doing. I feel so much more confident in my fishkeeping because of you. You have really helped me understand a lot about breeding fish, and you inspire me to think creatively about problem solving in my fishkeeping hobby. I just really, really appreciate you. It feels like a valuable public service. I am so grateful.
That is so great to hear. Thank you! More than anything I want these videos to be helpful, even if just to prompt a thought that leads to doing something completely different from what I do. That makes me happy.
This is absolutely brilliant. Paramecium is the next culture on my to-do list so the timing is wonderful. I just set up some Vinegar Eels using your walkthrough and they are thriving.
Now that you mention it, it probably would work well for vinegar eels. Might just limit the amount of apple that could be added to the culture at once.
Cheers from my fish room channel in Chicago, where I am a satisfied subscriber of yours! This is such a simple yet fabulous hack, solving all manner of challenges associated with raising these cultures. Thank you!
Your videos are always amazing. I have gone full nerd on live cultures with black worms, daphnia, adult brine shrimp, grindle worms, micro worms, vinegar eels and paramecium. I am even culturing phytoplankton to feed to the brine shrimp and green water to feed to the daphnia. It can take a lot of work but so far I am enjoying it! I also have springtails, isopods, meal worms and wood roaches to feed my pet ants.
That's a really impressive list. Awesome! The way I look at live foods is as a little more labor in exchange for trivializing the difficulty of raising fry. It's worth it.
Total "giant nerd" here. You found me. I think mine originally were acquired from Carolina Biological by Greg Sage but I got mine from him. I use the wheat kernals as well. Corn husks just put out too strong of an odor.
I got started with wheat kernels after reading a guide written for use in breeding zebrafish for lab studies. I figure those folks know what they're doing and I've followed it ever since.
@@MakeMoreFish Hi Can you share with that guide? I noted now many science labs are using marine rotifers to raise zebrafish. Not sure whether we can try rotifers.
@@richardmei2506 It's been a few years but I'm pretty sure it was this guide or another that quoted the same source: zfin.org/zf_info/zfbook/chapt3/3.3.html
Just 1 little tip for people doing this and using the 2 inch hole saw shown here.. If you use it in reverse, they dont cut a quickly but will still work and you wont crack your hard plastic doing it... Give it a try..
Love it! So much more high tech and convenient than my juice jugs with a dog kibble in the bottom for them that I bring to auction. 😄and yes, I'm a giant nerd who loves growing (and feeding) paramecium.
Container is made. Wheat kernels bought. Culture arrives tomorrow. Many thanks for your constant inspiration. Also instead of a mesh I’m using part of a worm feeder which fits perfectly in a 2” planter. Seems to be the most easy way to maintain.
I'm really glad I hoarded those pots & mesh bags haha. Amazing idea since I'm currently not breeding any fish that require paramecia and it's been quite a bother to maintain. By the way, how's the mega culture going? I've always wondered if those giant cultures actually worked in practice
They big ones in plastic tubs? I still have two of them and at some point added hanging net pots to the lids just like I showed here. They work great. Those are my backup cultures that I set and forget for months at a time.
I am thinking that a paramecium culture with an overflow (hose into the side of the container) could be used as an automatic food dispenser for small fry by adding a secondary water source with a small water-pump on a timer.
Hi Lowell. Thanks so much for this helpful video. I had wheat berries from Dog feeding adventures. I had everything else except for the starter culture which I picked up off of eBay. My 2 jars of Paramecium are doing well and my baby White Clouds and Danios are very happy. I have a question though, do you add a small amount of Yeast when you start a Culture? I don't see it in your video, but I swear I saw it somewhere. Thoughts on Yeast?
I used to add yeast deliberately but lately I haven't. There will be yeast in a starter culture and also floating around in the air so it gets into the culture no matter what.
Yes it will. Infusoria is an umbrella term for any microorganism, usually more on the ciliate level than microcrustacean, that fish fry might eat. Functionally they're the same thing. I like paramecium because they are easy to culture in a stable and consistent way and are also physically large enough to see without magnification. It helps to know whether a culture truly has living, edible organisms in it rather than just being putrid water.
Hi Lowell, thank you for your such a creative idea to maintain the paramecium culture. I have some questions regarding the water you use for the paramecium culture. I lived in Australia and I can source the start culture from a local biological supply company. Its science name is Paramecium caudatum. However, when I tried to use pure water to do the culture by following your previous video, the result is not always satisfactory as its multiplication is not very stable. I could not maintaiin the culture for long period. I searched some information on website about how a science lab is doing that, it suggest to prepare the culture medium by adding 0.25g sodium bicarbonate into 1 liter of pure water apart from the wheat grains. Maybe the added sodium bicarbonate can be used to buffer the pH of the water. Do you think it is necessary? I don't want to make things too complicated for my hobby, but I would like to hear your comments. The purified water you use is the same as pure water that TDS is zero? Thank you.
The purpose of using purified water as I understand it is only to avoid heavy metals or other potential toxins that paramecium are particularly sensitive to. I don't remember any objective relating to water chemistry or mineral content. These days I make my cultures from my tap water run through a carbon block filter. That would be a little heavier on the mineral content. I have also raised them in RODI water. I doubt that is best for them but I didn't notice any negative impact. So in short, I don't have any reason to believe they are demanding of specific water parameters.
Yes it would work. Infusoria is an umbrella term used to describe a long and poorly defined list of small organisms that a fish fry might like to eat. More on the level of ciliates than microcrustaceans. Paramecium would absolutely be included in that list.
Would you ever consider culturing cyclops copepods? I managed to accidentally create several "cultures" after adding some pond sediment to a large plastic pretzel barrel with some dried leaves and soil, and then siphoning some of the buggers off the top with a pippette. Probably could be similar to culturing brine shrimp albeit freshwater instead of salt, or daphnia.
Live cyclops can be a little challenging for fish to catch and eat but for certain proficient micropredators I can see them being a great food supplement
@Lowell's Fish Lab: I have the "Fry Tray 7W x 8.6L", I have a pair of Balloon Rams actively defending the nest. I watched your instructions many times to raise Paramecium as food for newly hatched fish. I put 1 liter of purified water in the jar along with wheat that had been boiled for 15 minutes and added half of the Paramecium Caudatum purchased from Carolina Bio Supply (without yeast). I put them on a window sill without sunny. My problem now is that it looks like the Paramecium Caudatum population is decreasing, the water remains clear and the wheat grains remain unchanged after a few days. Do they have no food and are dying? I look forward to receiving your reply. Thanks Lowell.
I would say you should see the water clouding slightly. It will come on quickly as the wheat breaks down. Sometimes it can look like the paramecium are disappearing but really they are congregating closely around the wheat because there isn't much food floating around in the water column as a whole. If the situation doesn't improve then that does sound like an appropriate time to consider adding a tiny bit of yeast to kick off the process
Size. I use paramecium to feed fry that are exceptionally small and also picky eaters. Moina or brine shrimp I would use later once the fry have grown larger.
They are both useful, I would just use them in different situations. Though their diameters are similar, vinegar eels are 6-7 times longer than paramecium caudatum (which is large by paramecium standards). I use paramecium for freshly hatched fry that are too small for something like vinegar eels or baby brine shrimp. Tetras or danios for example.
Well, one thing that fish keeping is good for is filling your house with boxes of junk. Then you have to come up with creative ways to combine that junk into something "useful" to avoid admitting that you're some kind of hoarder and to justify the accumulation of more junk. This will all be used some day. This is a responsible purchase. I don't have a problem.
Paramecium are just one form of what we would call infusoria. I find them easy to culture consistently and also to see clearly because they are on the larger side. An infusoria culture started from a sample of aquarium water could have any number of species in it. It might work out great, you might get nothing useful, or you might get cyclops in the mix that might end up consuming everything else. You just never know. I like the control and consistency of culturing a single known species.
Absolutely, they're the same thing. Paramecium are just one example of hundreds or thousands of simple organisms that we would include in infusoria as an umbrella term.
@@MakeMoreFishaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, ok, thanks for clarifying that !🙂I will apply your method as my wife was very angry with me because of the smell of my water bowl with boiled potato 🤭
@MakeMoreFish I have another question Have you tried supplementing your baby brine shrimp but putting additives in the hatchery? I'm experimenting with adding spirulina, vitamin c, and fish oil in one of the jugs I use
I use Paramecium Caudatum specifically for their size. At 0.2-0.3 mm, they are the largest (at the time of this writing) offered by Carolina Biological Supply. They are small enough to be eaten easily by any fry I have worked with personally, yet are large enough to be clearly visible without magnification. This makes it easy to judge the state of a culture and the density of live organisms in a sample. This is in contrast to a broad, luck-of-the-draw infusoria culture where, depending on which species happen to dominate the culture, it might be hard to judge whether you have a useful food source or just cloudy, putrid water.
Positive for sure. I assume that yeast is what is actually consumed by the paramecium rather than the wheat. Adding yeast can speed up the initial growth but there's also yeast floating around in the air. It'll get into the culture no matter what.
Why aren't you using yeast as part of this process? Is it really not necessary? Ive been culturing paramecium for years and haven't really found the best way that produces an abundant amount.
Adding yeast can help kick things off, you just have to be a little careful with the amount. Too much can turn the upper layer of the culture into soup and choke out the water beneath. Yeast also floats around in the air so it will inoculate the culture no matter what.
Not in this case. I got to thinking recently that there is A) probably yeast present in any starter culture of paramecium and B) definitely yeast floating around in the air all around us so yeast will end up in the culture no matter what. Adding it deliberately can speed things up but as I think is shown here, it isn't strictly necessary.
Sometimes I do, but it isn't strictly necessary. Yeast is floating around in the air and would be present in a starter. Yeast is involved whether it is added deliberately or not.
wait paramecium ? as in the single celled organism , what , I thought those were microscopic how are you able to film them with a normal camera ? Do they just get that big ?
Awesome video and well planned out. I currently live in Taiwan and have learnt some things from the locals. to keep the culture long term we use hay. A very small amount. This slowly decomposes and doesn't go bad for months. One culture has been living off a pinch for almost a year now.
