I'm trying to grow up a rotifer culture, but I have a lot of problem with ciliates contamination.
I have tried several times to clean all the culture with a 55 um sieve, clean with bleach all the material that I use, but after one day ciliates are there again.
Do you have any advice?
Hello Katia; Once you have a sterile setup, how do you put the rotifers in? It's pretty easy to sterilize the setup but getting the animals in appears to be the problem. Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers
Screening and cleaning of the rotifers through the use of phytoplankton filters (< 50 µm) so as to reduce the number of ciliates or other small contaminants is an easy precaution which can be taken when setting up starter cultures. http://www.fao.org/3/w3732e0h.htm
Some practical solutions to control or eradicate ciliates from rotifer cultures are suggested here
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/004484868490348X
The collected rotifers should be immersed in chlorine-free fresh- water, for 5–10 min, followed by suspension in seawater at the culture salinity. This treatment removes several of the parasites, such as ciliates, flagellates and bacteria, and has little effect on survival of the rotifers. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9780470995143.app1
biological control to eradicate ciliates from microalgal cultures...
https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/525820
Dear Katia,
Try to inject pure oxygen on your rotifer's tank during 1-2 min. Then stop all the aeration (and water movement) during 10-20 min. The rotifers will move to the upper zone of the water column and you can collect them by siphoning it from the top (just the first 10-20 cm from the surface). To avoid ciliates growing again, alocate green scrubbers (hanging from the top til the bottom of the tanks) and flush some water from the bottom of the tank each day. Hope it might help.
Nacho
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