Vermicelli

[Vale!]

I am as clueless on this as you, FB!

Maybe something will turn up later that may help to explain it. Operator error isn't out of the question, of course!

[plankton]

Maybe they're chameleons/changelings and either turn into moina or female cyclops......(nightmarish mmmmwahahaha!)

[Vale!]

Maybe they ... turn into ... female cyclops....

Aaargh! Nightmarish indeed! I may need something to calm my nerves before proceeding ...

Done!


This morning's batch, once I'd verified that there were Cyclops in it, was very slowly brought to 41C and kept there for 15 minutes (highest seen was 41.8C). The whole process took two hours.

Results : no live Cyclops. A few motionless (though still alive) Moina who have now mostly recovered. I couldn't spot any dead Cyclops on the floor of the cooling bowl. I desperation I started looking at some of the tiny bits of debris floating on the surface and here are pics of three of them x200 (there were more) ...

This looks to me like a piece of female Cyclops :



And this one, ditto :



This fragment appears to have got itself involved with a bit of vegetable matter (I think?) so it's a bit harder to tell what it is.



What I didn't do was take a pic of any of the number of comb-like structures that I found, again floating, which I'm guessing are Cyclops' gill-parts. I suppose I could do that now, though it would mean disturbing the ephippium that's currently on the microscope's stage (I'm hoping that it might hatch) ...


Ah! I went to do that and in fact discovered a comb structure near the ephippium - could be from a male or a female I guess! So here it is (x200) :




Right, so these little critters do break apart at around 41C to 42C it appears, but perhaps only when the temperature increase has been relatively gradual?

[FishBubs]

Great find @Vale!

[Vale!]

I've heat-processed my last lot of bottled Moina/Cyclops , you'll be much relieved to hear!

Compared with yesterday, today's batch was an equally slow affair; but before progressing to 41C I stopped at 39.xC (lowest seen 39.3 ; highest 39.5) and kept it there for more than half-an-hour. I took two samples out for inspection and ... all Cyclops gone! Moina were noticeably more comfortable.

This time I did find a number of complete, and completely dead, male Cyclops but no complete dead females ; and an inspection of some of the floating debris revealed much the same as yesterday. I thought I'd have a go at better identification of some of the bits and pieces and I've become much better at it! Some of the bits that I'd previously guessed as being parts of Cyclops were, in fact, bits of Moina. Those 'combs' for example [pic of one is a couple of posts upthread].

As Moina grow they change shape somewhat during successive moults and end up looking really 'fluffy' ...



... as opposed to the svelte appearance of youngsters. Sorry I couldn't get a better illustration.

This is a pic of a rather bewildered Moina (it was returned to its mates afterwards) and arrowed is what I now think the 'combs' are : a feature of the 'fluffiness' :



It doesn't render very well, but if you squint hard enough it might! I was also able to tell bits of Moinas' jointed limbs from all the prongs and barbed whips that are Cyclops shrapnel. And the brownish oblong objects that I kept seeing are not pieces of vegetation but rather broken Moina guts!

It may well be that senior citizen Moina are vulnerable to the heat treatment but I remind myself that they live only two or three weeks, so there's always going to be quite a number of dead ones about irrespective of temperature.

What I have left now is my collection of Cyclops to play with. I think I'd like to separate out some males and females to see if they do react to 39.xC differently from each other, as it appears.

I took video of some of this. There were rotifers parked on offcuts of the fallen, including one particularly splendid example.


[TrevorMcDonaldvoice] And finally ... [/TrevorMcDonaldvoice]

I thought you might be amused to see what some Moina were doing earlier this afternoon when their light switched itself on: tornado training ...

[FishBubs]

Cool images including the murmuration of moina.
I came across this report, the image is what caught my eye, a nice definition of moina

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Vl ... dGlvbiJ9fQ

[Vale!]

That's a nice wee find, FB, thanks!

Its last paragraph hinted at something I've been wondering about. Actually my eyes screeched to a halt at the typo ; and in fact I did look up the dictionary to try to get a definition of "cultch". Then I realised what it was supposed to be.

I've had a Moina ephippium on my microscope's stage for a couple or three days, alternately letting it dry out then reflooding in the hope I might be able to see what comes out of one. It doesn't seem terribly keen, to tell the truth. I've got some others on standby, so maybe I'll try a different approach. Anyway I think I had unconsciously assumed that one Moina would come out of each ephippia and thereafter kind of thought no more about it until those couple or three days ago. Then the paper you dug up starts talking about 'clutches'. Two's hardly a clutch!

Beneath its shell, the surface of an ephippium's innards looks like a blackberry. That's what it meant by 'clutch', then? I'm now thinking that each blackberry nodule is a potential Moina. In which case we're talking about hundreds of Moina tumbling out of one of these things. In which case that would explain how they multiply so fast!

[Vale!]

The results of yesterday's final batch replicated the previous one. I held at 39.xC (lowest 39.0 ; highest 39.9) for fifteen minutes and all Cyclops died during that period, while the Moina seemed comfortable enough.

The remainder of my extensive Cyclops collection has been donated to Anglian Water, in perpetuity.


At half-past three yesterday afternoon I put a tub of volunteers into the fridge. Volunteers comprised of: male and female Cyclops ; Moina ; and four Dero worms. Fridge temperature was c7.8C

They were inspected several times and at ten o'clock everyone looked in fine fettle. I had expected the Cyclops and Moina would slow down dramatically, but no.

They spent the night in the fridge without any obvious changes, and at a quarter to ten this morning I put them in the freezer compartment. At 10:42 inspection I saw the bottom had a layer of ice, so I took the tub out and had a look : nobody was moving.



I let it thaw and re-inspected at 11:12. None of the Moina were moving ; and one male Cyclops moved somewhat reluctantly when prodded.

At eight o'clock this evening : Moina were motionless, unresponsive to prodding and presumed dead; female Cyclops, ditto ; however no fewer than 7 male Cyclops were zipping around.

So the Cryo-Kill strategy works ... but not in the way we perhaps had hoped!

[Vale!]

I'm doing a rough comparison between Fish Mix and F2 fertilisers. It was the F2 that I'd been using in my previous failed attempts to maintain a Chlorella culture.

However I've just rejigged the lighting and, if F2 were to work OK with that, I could maybe ditch, or at least become less reliant on, the Fish Mix : it's messy in the cultures and (this is an extraordinarily rare occurrence, I'll have you know) Mrs.V! held her nose and went "Eeew" when she caught me dosing Fish Mix a couple of days ago. As it happens, this is precisely my reaction when she cooks with bagoong (pronounced bagoo - ong), which is fermented shrimp (I call it 'feet'). It is weapons-grade noxious, only fractionally more lethal than Fish Mix. Anyway ...

This is my current setup:



Inside the LED-lined and reflective-sheet-wrapped acrylic tube there's a two-litre carafe. Above it is a red/blue grow light ; and below it a magnetic stirrer (new toy - £30 - worth a go).

The bottles to the left have light from a red/green growlight, plus whatever makes it through that North-facing window, and are fed with Fish Mix (I may be overfeeding, btw), apart from the very pale one which is F2-fed and is only now showing a greenish tinge fully a week after startup. All of the 'Fish Mix' bottles have a layer of sludge and compacted Chlorella which demands frequent shaking - hence the magnetic stirrer! I wonder if there's a DIY/cheap way to achieve the same end?

The two-litre carafe (tapwater, Prime and 3 squirts of seed culture from a pipette) was started on 16th November and did nothing until 21st November, when there was a definite change. That may or may not have something to do with my switching on the growlight at some point between those dates. I took a pic which is the top one below (if you see what I mean) ; for some reason the camera rendered it as yellow, but it was really pale, wishy-washy green :



The lower image was from this morning, so it seems to be doing OK.


Also this morning I scraped out a little bit of the gunk which has semi-dried out around the opening of the bottle of Fish Mix. I wanted to see what (if anything) Dero worms would make of it. Top-to-bottom, this collage shows the scrummage that formed over the course of just over two hours. They moved it around for a while after that before the scrum rejoined the greater mass of worms.




The only other event of any note has been the opening of some bottles of two-year-old peat water but that's off-topic. And dull.

[FishBubs]

The bottles to the left have light from a red/green growlight, plus whatever makes it through that North-facing window, and are fed with Fish Mix (I may be overfeeding, btw), apart from the very pale one which is F2-fed and is only now showing a greenish tinge fully a week after startup. All of the 'Fish Mix' bottles have a layer of sludge and compacted Chlorella which demands frequent shaking - hence the magnetic stirrer! I wonder if there's a DIY/cheap way to achieve the same end?

Indeed there is @Vale! because i have come to the same comclusion as your good self.
1) constant shaking of the bottles
2) some scum forming and a bit whiffy
3) the idea that there is always an easier way.

Point number 1.

I have at least 4 bottles on the go, two keep outside (or did before the freeze started but they have now been moved to-the shed behind a window. And two indoors. All four needed constant staking to prevent clumping at the bottom. My initial thought was to use one of those cheap milk frothers but it didnt suit, i wanted something to agitate the bottom. So you tube is your friend when in need.

I had a spare pc fan which i rigged up to a speed controller and a multi voltage plug. Glued a washer to one side of the fan then popped strong earth magnets on the washer. I did initially glue very small magnets to the fan but i stupidly forgot to check polarity before sticking then wondered why my fan kept jumping around like a jumping bean. By using the washer, i can change size, strength and number of magnets as the need requires.

Then mounted the fan to the underside of a home made platform



Popped a small spinner magnet (which looks rather like a giant tictac, inside a jar and filled with water for testing



Filled with chlorella next and tested



The only isdue i have is the amount of liquid i can actually mix. So far this set up only allows up to 850 ml. My next attempt i will add more magnets to washer and a larger magnet inside the jug but the main idea is a success.

Once i have it sussed, i will try this next ….



A simple laptop cooler, 6 fans and you can select how many fans at a time. A possible option which allows to keep all chlorella cultures in one place and possibly under one light during winter times when there is less sunlight.

Point number 2.

I have started to use less fish mix in the bottles. So for a 1.5l bottle of chlorella innoculated dechlorinated water, i use just under 1ml of fish mix. Readon it is not an accurate figure is because i fill the syringe to 1 ml but there is always stuff left in the nozzle as it is quite gloopy. I dont refeed either, that is it for the duration of its life cycle. This balance has helped alleviate the scum issue and reduced whiffiness although i do keep filter floss in the top of the bottle too which helps even more. I have just started a new bottle with about 100ml of chlorella liquid from last batch and popped it against a spare fish tank lid that has lights on it. So i am hoping this will help the culture as sunlight is a little lacking.