Starter food - infusoria shoe (Paramecium Caudatum). Cultivation of infusoria shoes at home Ciliates shoe how to grow

Who is an infusoria?

Infusoria-shoe (lat. Paramecium caudatum) is a type of ciliates, unicellular organisms from the alveolate group. Usually other species of the genus Paramecium are also called ciliates-shoes. Found in fresh waters. Received its name for the constant shape of the body, reminiscent of the sole of a shoe. The size of the infusoria of the shoe is 0.1 - 0.3 mm. Floating in the water column, the shoe rotates around the longitudinal axis. The movement speed is about 2 - 2.5 mm/s. The infusoria feeds on bacteria, microalgae, fungi (yeast). The infusoria finds its prey by sensing the presence chemical substances, which secrete clusters of bacteria. They reproduce sexually and asexually. The reproduction rate of ciliates is high, which is very convenient and allows you to get a sufficient amount of live food from small volumes of the cultivator.

Infusoria is used as a starter live food for fish fry, it is part of the "live dust". On live food, fry grow much better and faster than on commercial, artificial, industrial and homemade food. But along with rotifers, ciliates are less nutritious, and their speed of movement is faster, which is not entirely good for sedentary fry, it is more interesting for its reproduction rates. It is better to use ciliates in combination with rotifers. If the fry gobble up all the rotifers in the little house, then they can always have a bite to eat with infusoria.

Breeding infusoria.

Ciliates are cultivated in containers of 3 liters or more, ordinary glass jars are excellent. They are very convenient to monitor the state of the culture, to choose the right dosage of feed.

Ciliates are bred on banana peels, lettuce, nettles, carrots, yeast, milk, etc.

Pre-prepare the container. It is necessary to rinse it with a solution of soda / salt, while not using any chemicals. 2/3 fill the jar with boiled water, bring to room temperature.

Breeding and feeding methods are divided into 2 types, 1 - with the periodic addition of feed and 2 - a single run into the "broth of bacteria" to get an outbreak of ciliates.

Method one:

In the prepared container with water, we launch the starting culture of ciliates and add food.

Baker's dry yeast is used as feed (sold in any store). On a pack of yeast they write the composition, in it, in addition to Latin name there should be nothing of the type of yeast. Yeast is preliminarily diluted with boiled water and added to the cultivator, drip! At the beginning of cultivation, until the ciliates have multiplied, a few drops of the suspension will suffice. There should be a slight haze. This procedure is repeated every 2-3 days, with a gradual increase in the dosage of feed.

You can also use boiled skim milk. You need to be even more careful with it, 1-3 drops every 1-2 weeks are enough.

Method two:

The essence of this method is to start the starter culture of ciliates already in the prepared feed. To do this, we take (optional) dry peels of a ripe banana (not damaged), lettuce, nettles, pieces of carrots, potatoes ... etc., on which bacteria will multiply, and the bacteria, in turn, will become food for ciliates. We wash them in running water and run them into a cultivator filled with water. We need, approximately, a handful of such crusts. After a few days, bacteria will begin to multiply rapidly in the jar, which is evidenced by the appearance of turbidity and a slight unpleasant odor. After 4-7 days, you can add ciliates. She will begin to multiply and after 3-5 days she will completely fill the jar, at which time she can begin to feed the fry.

Observation of the culture of infusoria. Reloading the cultivator.

Bacteria gradually decompose the rinds in the jar. At this time, to keep the culture alive, it is either put into a new cultivator with a prepared solution, or added to an old yeast suspension, as described in the first method.

In any case, once every 1-1.5 months it is necessary to restart the cultivator, as waste products and food residues accumulate in it, which inhibits the reproduction of ciliates.

Feeding fry live dust.

As soon as the live food has multiplied enough, it can be used for its intended purpose, namely, to start feeding the fry.

The water in which ciliates breed is too dirty and adding it to the fry will kill them. To avoid this, we need to clean the infusoria from this water.

There are several ways:

Strain the solution with infusoria through filter paper and gently rinse it in water with fry.

Ciliates and rotifers form accumulations on the surface and on the sides of the cultivator in the form of a film. This film can be collected with cotton swabs and transferred to a container with clean water. It is necessary to wait 30-60 minutes for the infusoria to eat up most of the bacteria and pour water to the fry.

Pour the solution with the infusoria into the flask bottle, without adding 2-3 cm to the edge of the neck, plug it with cotton wool, immersing it a little in the solution. From above, in the remaining space, carefully pour clean water. We close the bottle with a cloth, and bring the neck out into the light, the infusoria will swim towards the light, through the cotton wool, into clean water. From there, it can be collected with a pipette or pear and poured into the fry.

Where can I get a starter culture of infusoria for breeding?

You can order the starting culture of ciliates in our store website

In the catalog you can find other live foods that can be bred at home.

This is the same single-celled organism that is studied in biology lessons in high school. It is very small, only 0.3-0.6 mm, shaped like the sole of a shoe. In the aquarium trade is important component to feed fry that are not yet able to eat larger food.

How to grow a ciliate shoe at home

Step #1. Prepare Empty Bottle/Jar and Molding Plants

Prepare a reservoir - it can be an empty bottle or a glass jar. Fill it with aquarium water. Ciliates feed on bacteria, so you will need to prepare a culture for their appearance. Take no leaves poisonous plants, rinse thoroughly and place them in a tank of water. Leaves of trees, lettuce, cucumber peel, etc. will do.

Step #2. Add herbal dry fish food

Another important ingredient besides plant leaves can be fish food from algae (spirulina, chlorella), in the form of dried flakes or granules. They are used in feeding herbivorous species, are sold in almost all specialized pet stores or in the "bird market".

Step number 3. Put the tank in a lighted place

Both crops (leaves and fodder) should be exposed to the sun for a week or more. Of course, in our latitudes to grow ciliates better in summer, when sunny days in excess. The bottle/jar must be opened for gas exchange to occur. Once or twice a day, the contents are gently mixed

Step number 4. Development of a colony of bacteria

After a while, the water will darken - this is an overgrown colony of bacteria that feed on the decay products of plant leaves and algae.

Step number 5. Development of a colony of ciliates

The next step is ciliates. As a rule, ciliates are already present in a mature aquarium in small quantities. Draw water as close to the ground as possible near the plants and pour it into a bottle / jar. In this fertile environment, they will multiply rapidly. Due to their microscopic size, it is impossible to see them without a microscope, so you can judge the amount by the color of the water. She will become lighter and rosier.

Step #6: Feeding the fry

Feed the fry should be a few drops from a pipette. The number of drops depends on the volume of the spawning aquarium. The larger it is, the more water from the bottle with ciliates will have to be poured.

Step number 7. Maintenance of ciliates population

Over time, there will be less and less food for ciliates, so in order to save the population, it will be necessary to prepare another tank with a colony of bacteria, where part of the contents from the first bottle / jar will be poured. Such procedures will have to be repeated regularly until the fry will need such microscopic food.

Infusoria-shoe - a type of ciliates belonging to the group of alveolates. Got its name from unusual shape resembling the sole of a shoe. It lives in all fresh water bodies.

Description

The sizes of the shoes are tiny, but at the same time, relative to other single-celled ones, they are quite large. An adult shoe can reach sizes up to 0.3 mm, however, some have managed to grow individuals up to 0.6 mm. The body is elongated, semicircular in cross section. The outer membrane serves as the upper shell for the body. It is transparent so you can see everything through it. internal structure ciliates. The most prominent against the background of other organs is the macronucleus. It is manifested by a fat dot on the body. Cilia are located on the surface of the shoes, with the help of which the ciliates move and hunt. Their number can vary from 10 to 15 thousand.

Why grow?

The fact is that fish fry cannot eat food that they easily swallow. large individuals. For their breeding, a special, starting food is needed. Shoes ciliates are suitable as such food. Their breeding will not be difficult, but the fry, eating them, will grow healthier and stronger.

How to find infusoria?

There is an easy and entertaining way to find, and most importantly, separate the shoe from the rest of the microorganisms:

1. Take a piece of glass and place 2 drops of water on it, one of which should be taken from the aquarium, and the second from the faucet, and settled for a while.
2. Add a few grains of salt to a drop from the aquarium.
3. Build a thin "path" of water between the drops. For this, any needle or toothpick can be used, it is enough to hold it between the drops. All fresh microorganisms will rush to clean, unsalted water.
4. The shoe, due to its cilia, is much more agile than its counterparts. That is why the first to be in the water bridge will be none other than a thoroughbred ciliate.
5. Using a pipette, we send it to a tank with clean water for further dilution.

How to cultivate?

In order to breed shoe culture, no special conditions are needed, so their cultivation is very simple and within the power of many fish breeders.

To create a large colony of shoes, it is enough to acquire one. After about a month of keeping, this shoe will be born, and the bank will already have a colony of ciliates - more than 40 thousand copies per cubic centimeter. This number is the maximum concentration of shoes in water.

An individual ciliate must be placed in glass jar(preferably 3 liter) settled fresh water. Glass allows light to pass through, which improves colony growth. Room temperature is great to start breeding microorganisms, but 22-26 degrees is ideal for ciliates. At this temperature, it will be possible to grow a colony with largest number shoes. It is advisable to put the jar in a ventilated place or provide it with a purge. This is due to the fact that in the presence of oxygen in the water, the ciliates sink to the bottom, and when it is lacking, they float, which helps with tracking and further collection.

What to feed

In food, shoes are also unpretentious. You can feed them at home. For nutrition, they need substrates for the development of bacteria. They eat any plant food, fish food, milk and liver. For convenience, the products are dried, and then lowered in gauze into a tank with ciliates. In order not to overfeed them, a piece of about 2-3 cm will be enough.

You can also use hay infusion for feeding. It is very easy to prepare it. Dip hay into boiling water, at the rate of 10 g per 1 liter and leave to simmer for 20 minutes. Heat will kill all microorganisms, but the bacteria will remain, it is they who will feed on the ciliates in the future. The finished solution is poured into any convenient container and left at room temperature for 2-3 days, during which time the bacteria will multiply, and they can be fed to ciliates. This type of nutrition is called hydrolytic yeast, it is necessary to add them to the water at the rate of 1 g per 10 liters once a week and a half.

The easiest way to feed ciliates is milk and dairy products. Skimmed milk or plain condensed milk is best. Add 2 drops per week to the solution. Ciliates do not feed on milk itself, but on lactic acid bacteria.

When feeding a culture, it must be remembered that when the solution is supersaturated with bacteria, the ciliates will begin to die from an insufficient amount of air. To avoid this situation, you need to carefully monitor the portions of bacteria that enter the reservoir to the shoes.

Use as feed

After successful breeding, you can start collecting ciliates. For convenience, it is desirable to move the entire colony to the surface of the water. Consider the 2 most convenient and easy ways to do this:

• collection with milk.

Pour the milk mixture into the water and turn off the purge. After that, it remains to wait 2 hours and the ciliates themselves will float to the surface.

• Collection with salt.

A salt solution is added to the jar, causing the ciliates to float to the surface.

Now you can start collecting. You can collect them using a hose. You can also build a structure that will constantly feed the fry with fresh ciliates. To do this, you need a regular dropper tube, which can be purchased at a pharmacy. Place a jar of ciliates over the aquarium, insert a hose into it, lower it and adjust the water supply from the jar using a clamp. Ideally, water should be dispensed in drops at 2-3 second intervals.

Everyone can make such a mini-farm for breeding ciliates at home. Eating ciliates, the fry will grow healthy and strong, which means they will be able to live a long life.

Greetings to all who are well acquainted with school bench ciliate shoe is a numerous inhabitant of water bodies and at the same time the most valuable live food for aquarium fish. In addition to high nutritional value ciliates-shoes, its microscopic size is very important, because the fry of aquarium fish cannot eat larger food.

Description and characteristics of unicellular

Infusoria shoe (Infusoria) refers to the species Paramecium Caudatum. These are unicellular protozoan animals with a microscopically small body size (0.1-0.35 mm), their species has more than 8 thousand representatives. The reason for the peculiar name of the ciliates-shoes was its appearance, with outlines resembling the sole of a shoe.

The nutrition of shoes consists of microscopic algae and bacteria that the ciliates pass through the body along with water. The infusoria-shoe feeds in motion, its mouth is always wide open, and food particles gradually accumulate in it. According to biologists, ciliates evolved from flagellates of prehistoric times.

On the entire surface of the body of the ciliate there are small rows of cilia, which serve as a kind of "fins" for it. In order for the ciliate to move from place to place, the cilia produce oscillatory wave-like movements.

The speed of the shoe is such that in one second it overcomes a path that is fifteen times the size of the ciliate itself. The habitat of these protozoa are natural and man-made freshwater ponds in which there is no current.

In such reservoirs, there is a lot of organic matter, which decomposes and thus provides enough food for the protozoa. The infusoria-shoe lives even in home aquariums. It can only be seen under a microscope.

Did you know? A small aquarium fish of the guppy breed made a trip to the Earth's orbit in the company of Russian cosmonauts aboard the Salyut-5 orbital station. The unpretentious and cute fish endured the flight perfectly and safely returned to its native aquarium.

ciliates as food

As soon as the aquarist gains a little experience, he immediately tries to breed his pets on his own. When fry appear in the aquarium, the problem immediately arises, which consists in what to feed them. And only living dust (plankton) suits them. Experienced aquarists say that the size of food for fish larvae (fry) should not exceed the size of the fry's eye.

Infusoria Paramecium Caudatum is an excellent food for aquarium fry and is suitable for almost all types of adult aquarium fish.

Nutritional value of ciliates-shoes:

• protein - 58.1%;
• fats - 31.7%;
• ash - 3.4%.

Where to get

There are two ways to provide your fish with fresh and nutritious live food:

• acquire living dust in pet stores;
• breed ciliates on their own;
• to catch small plankton in the pond with your own hands.

In pet stores or aquarist stores, live dust is sold with liquid, per liter. To keep the food alive, it needs to be purchased about twice a week.

If you decide to catch live dust yourself, you need to purchase a special net with synthetic or silk fabric. The sparseness of such a tissue should be quite dense, the cells should not be thicker than 0.1 mm.
After the first intake of water into the net, you need to examine the collected liquid under a magnifying glass to find out if there is at least some living creature in it. If it turns out that the plankton is alive, then you can continue to catch live dust. In the process of filtering, the smallest plankton remains at the bottom of the net.

As a result of such fishing, your living dust will consist not only of ciliates-shoes, but also of larvae (nauplii) of cyclops and rotifers. The entire catch is placed in a glass jar of water and brought home.

Already at home, the brought live dust is filtered again through nets with a cloth of different density. This will help sort the plankton by size. Caught plankton will stay alive for 5 days.

If you do not have a great desire to run around the ponds every week and look for food for your fish, then the best way out is to breed live dust at home.

Did you know? In the body of the ciliates-shoes there are two nuclei: large and small. The large nucleus is responsible for movement and nutrition, and the small nucleus is responsible for reproduction. Ciliates reproduce by division, and when this protozoan is ready for reproduction, its body stretches, a thin bridge forms in the middle, which eventually breaks. As a result of division, two adults are obtained, which in due time will again be divided.

How to breed

In order to start breeding ciliates at home, you first need to purchase material for propagating the culture. Where can you get it?

There are two options:

• ask a more experienced aquarist for some ciliates-shoes "for divorce";
• catch with your own hand in the pond using a net.

The best option is to get an infusoria from a fellow aquarist. In order to scoop up more ciliates, water is taken from the very bottom of the aquarium, preferably closer to the algae growing at the bottom.
The breeding material taken from the aquarium will be clean, without foreign impurities. Indeed, in the material taken from natural reservoirs, in addition to ciliates, various crustaceans are often found, which can destroy both shoes and fish larvae.

If you decide to get the breeding material yourself, then you need to get to the nearest reservoir and scoop up some silt mixed with water from the bottom. Put your booty in a jar and bring it home.

For further work, you will need a small even glass (5 by 10 cm in size), a microscope or a magnifying glass, a syringe (a pipette, a disposable syringe without a needle), a sharply sharpened thin stick.

We take a drop of water from a jar brought from the pond and place it under a microscope (magnifying glass). Considering all this wealth, we will see many different types of protozoa - among them you can easily identify a shoe.

Next, we collect a drop of clean, non-chlorinated water with a pipette and place it on the same glass, close to the drop from the pond. Our task is to select several specimens of ciliates-shoes from lake water and move them to clean water.

If you do not have the knack to do this procedure with a pipette, you need to do it differently. Using a sharp wooden stick, we connect both drops (lake and clean) with a thin water channel.

Shoes are very fond of fresh water and will immediately move into a drop of clean water. Other protozoa are not very keen on clean water, so it will be mainly ciliates-shoes that will move. This procedure can be repeated up to a dozen times and get a culture of shoes that is clean from pests.

After that, the selected ciliates must be placed in an incubator jar for reproduction. Before moving live dust into a jar, you need to pour clean water up to half the volume and place it in a well-lit place.
An important point - the jar should not fall directly Sun rays. In order to create a nutrient medium in the jar, you need to add a few drops of fresh milk (two or three drops).

The temperature in the room where the incubator jar will be installed can be normal room temperature (20-22°C). If the goal of the aquarist is the rapid reproduction of living dust, then you just need to raise the temperature in the room to 26-28 ° C: this will speed up the reproduction process several times.

In a warm nutrient medium, the ciliate-shoe begins to multiply rapidly. As food for protozoa, a small piece of organic matter is lowered into the water; the most massive accumulations of ciliates occur just around it.

If a film forms on the surface of the nutrient fluid over time, which prevents the flow of oxygen into the jar, then the protozoa accumulate closer to the neck of the jar.

To create a nutrient medium in an incubator jar, you can use not only milk, but also dry banana or pumpkin peels, hay infusion, pieces of fresh carrots or fish feed (in granules). As the nutrient solution matures in the room, a not-too-pleasant smell of fermentation appears.
The classic recipe for breeding ciliates-shoes on a banana: The banana peel is dried and stored in a container that is hermetically sealed. When the time comes to breed the shoes, the dry peel is taken, rinsed under cold running water and placed in an incubator jar, which was previously placed in fresh water and a little water from the aquarium (containing ciliates).

For 6 liters of water, 1/3 of the entire banana peel is taken from one fruit. Further, as usual, the container is installed in a bright and warm place. In the process of reproduction, the number of ciliates will increase exponentially.

The peak of their number falls on 14-21 days (depending on the temperature in the room) and will remain at a high level for 20 days. After this time, the number of living dust in the bank will steadily begin to decrease.

If the aquarist urgently needs live food and it is not possible to wait several weeks for breeding, then the process can be accelerated. Dry banana peel is placed in a saucepan (the proportions are the same), poured with boiling water, covered with a lid and left to cool completely naturally. The cooled contents of the saucepan are added to a jar of water and plankton. The jar is installed in a warm, well-lit place. The expected outbreak of ciliates occurs on the 6th-7th day, their number is much higher than with traditional breeding.

It’s just that the shoes obtained in this way live much less, so experienced aquarists lay 3-5 of these cans at regular intervals. This helps to get a burst of live food abundance by the desired date.

Milk infusion recipe: The second easiest to prepare is the reproduction of live dust on whole milk without sugar (cream removed from milk is also suitable). Milk is added to a jar of shoes and water weekly at the rate of one or two drops per liter. Ciliates feed on lactic acid bacteria.

Important!When adding top dressing, it is important not to overdose. In case of an overdose, the bacteria will begin to multiply too quickly and absorb the oxygen intended for the ciliates. If shoes are grown on bacteria, they have a pronounced phototaxis (the desire for light).

Hay infusion recipe: 10 g of dried and chopped grass is taken (this is about two tablespoons with a slide) and poured with one liter of hot water. The mixture is brought to a boil, after which the fire is greatly reduced and the herbal decoction is continued to cook over low heat for 20 minutes.

When the mood is boiled, all microorganisms are destroyed in it, but bacterial spores remain alive. The same amount of non-chlorinated, settled water is added to the finished broth.

After three to four days, the bacterial spores will develop hay bacilli. This will be food for breeding ciliates-shoes. The infusion is added to the incubator jar, where living dust breeds. To store the infusion on hay, choose a cool and dark place; the infusion will not lose its shelf life for 30 days.

Seaweed recipe: Even aquarists breed shoes on chlorella and scenedesmus algae. A liter of algae is mixed with one granule of carp feed. Ciliates that feed on algae cannot tolerate daylight (negative phototaxis).
This property of feed with algae can be used when growing shade-loving aquarium fish or their larvae. Ciliates grown in this way live for about 20 days - in order to prolong the vitality of the culture, it is placed in the refrigerator. The optimum temperature for its storage is between 3°C and 10°C.

Another little-known way of breeding shoes: After cleaning the aquarium, the water collected from the bottom is poured into plastic bottles and exposed to the sun. Bottled water turns green, and after a while the greens settle to the bottom of the bottles. After that, you need to check the water with a magnifying glass for the presence of ciliates.

Usually in this liquid there is a very large number of shoes, they are all large and well-fed. By the way, dressing for shoes in this culture can not be added for a week, the remnants of rotting greens will be quite enough for them to feed.

How to give live dust to fish

To feed the fish, aquarists use a tricky trick: they place a piece of algae in a culture jar. After a while, a lot of ciliates gather around the plant, they are collected with a pipette and released into the aquarium to the fry waiting for food.

For feeding young fish, you can also use a small two-cube disposable syringe without a needle. A jar with multiplied ciliates is removed into the shade, after a while the shoes float closer to the surface.

Did you know? The price of the most expensive aquarium fish ranges from$ 70.000 to$ 80.000. This one is called valuable breed"dragon fish", or "Arowana". Its final sale price depends on the color of the body and fins. But this is not the limit, the rarest variety of this breed of fish (platinum Arovana) will cost the connoisseur$ 400.000!

After that, they are carefully collected with a syringe and transferred to the aquarium to the hungry fry. In the jar you need to add as much pure water as it has decreased as a result of selection. The water must not be chlorinated or boiled.

We must not forget that in the water, along with ciliates, there may be bacteria that they eat. It is undesirable if the bacteria get into the aquarium with the fry, so the collection of shoes for food should be done after the bulk of the bacteria have been eaten by them.

With a little effort and diligence, even a not very experienced aquarist will be able to establish the breeding process of ciliates-shoes at home. The fry from his aquarium will always be provided with hearty and healthy food.

Excellent food for fry are ciliates-shoes and rotifers. If desired, any aquarist can breed them at home, if only he seriously cares about the health of the small inhabitants of the aquarium.

Breeding ciliates at home

Let's start with breeding ciliates, which are not only natural, but also available for cultivation to anyone. Breeding ciliates is not difficult at all, you just need to learn how to separate a pure culture from inedible impurities.

For a pure culture ciliates-shoes you can use the knowledge gained in school zoology lessons. We place a drop of water from the aquarium on a glass slide and add a crystal of table salt. Nearby, but on the illuminated side, we place a drop of clean, settled tap water.

Using an ordinary needle, a pointed match or a toothpick, we connect both drops with a water bridge. Ciliates rush towards the light and fresh water. It turns out that they are much faster than other single-celled ones, so they will move into clean water earlier than others. We collect this drop of pure water with ciliates with an ordinary glass pipette and use it for further dilution.

Pour clean water into a 3-liter jar no more than 75% of the volume and launch infusoria from a pipette there. It remains only to feed them in a timely manner and monitor the state of the water. Top dressing is milk (a couple of drops per jar), chopped carrots (2-3 pieces), potato peels, lettuce, hay decoction and even dried banana peel (fifth). Any of the proposed dressings will give good result, so choose the most convenient option for you personally.

After applying top dressing, it remains only to follow, Is the water very cloudy?. Attention! If there is an unpleasant smell of hydrogen sulfide, this indicates that a lot of extra feeding was added to the jar. Ciliates cease to multiply and die if the feeding is not removed.

We place the culture jar in a warm place, but not under bright sunlight. Optimum temperature 18–22 ° C are considered for reproduction of ciliates.

You may have decided to formula feed your fry. different types unicellular. This is quite acceptable, since the kids themselves will choose from everything offered what they need, namely edible ciliates. Only then will you have to take water from a healthy aquarium for breeding. In such water, all types of edible ciliates are usually available.

If everything was done correctly, then after 2 weeks the water in the jar will become transparent, and in it, looking closely, you can see individual ciliates. It is done! It remains to pour water with ciliates into the aquarium. Just try to time the breeding of ciliates to the beginning of spawning.

Breeding rotifers at home

Rotifers considered another nutritious live food for fry. By their size, they do not exceed either ciliates-shoes and are found in most fresh water bodies as part of plankton (pond dust). feed on rotifers microorganisms present in the water. They reproduce at high speed, so they are able to very quickly populate any reservoirs. Rotifers help by cleaning it along with ciliates. Interestingly, if their habitat dries up, rotifers do not die. They fall into a state of suspended animation and can be transported in this form by wind, insects and birds over long distances. Once in the water, rotifers wake up again. Such amazing vitality allows them to populate any water bodies from a drying puddle to major rivers and reservoirs.

The ability of miniature rotifers to multiply rapidly in soft and distilled water allows them to be artificially bred for feeding fry at home. And this is another plus for getting them in pure form as an excellent food for aquarium inhabitants who prefer water with a low temperature.

To start breeding rotifers, you will need the individuals themselves, which, with the help of a small net covered with mill gas, can be caught from any small rain puddle. The resulting catch is placed in a 3-liter glass jar filled with hay decoction in the ratio of 2 grams per 1 liter of distillate. After 3 days, add distilled water to the jar to the top.

The ideal temperature for breeding rotifers is 22–32°C. It will take 2 days and a sufficient number of rotifers will appear in the bank, with which you can feed the fry. Now it remains only not to forget that every 10 days you should add a few drops of boiled milk to a jar of rotifers.

As you can see, there is nothing complicated in breeding ciliates and rotifers, and the benefits of this are considerable. And most importantly, the fry receive a complete and high-quality diet.