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 journey into Earth 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:

• purchase live 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 with 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 be exposed to direct sunlight. 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 days 14-21 (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. Optimum temperature for its storage - from 3°C to 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.

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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.

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AT recent times More and more aquarists are trying to breed their own aquarium fish.
What used to be within the power of units, now every small-scale literate fish farmer at the beginning tries his hand at breeding, then, as a rule, (Loricaria), then they go with and at the end the line comes to.

This is where the very moment comes when living dust is needed. After all, as we all know, the amount of food for a (larva) should be equal to the size of its eye. Here is the opinion of experienced fish breeders. Therefore, in order not to run for hours in search of dust in swamps and reservoirs with a net, you can do it much easier and spread the dust yourself in artificial conditions.

I will write it from personal experience how to properly organize the whole process of breeding and obtaining a culture of shoe ciliates. After all, it is she who is the main component for feeding dust.
It is advisable to have someone from the senior aquarists help you if you do not have enough knowledge in aquarism.
But let's hope that my explanations will be enough, and therefore let's get started.

To begin with, you need to acquire the necessary equipment, you will need several three-liter jars, an ordinary medical syringe, instead of the plastic tip of which a glass pipette tip is inserted, a warm room t-26 * C, with soft indirect sunlight.
Not a large piece of glass and a lens (the size of the shoes is from 0.1-0.3 mm), therefore, the increase in it should be quite strong.

Author's note: (for example, I went to the school where I studied many years ago and asked to use a microscope in the biology room in order to see ciliates at the very beginning and understand how it looks, and then I just picked up the necessary lens in the optics store)

There are many ways to breed shoes, on banana peels, on hay, on milk, on dried lettuce leaves and on baker's yeast, etc.
For myself, I chose the simplest, on a banana peel, or on milk. Some of these products I always had on hand.

Let me explain what the difference is.
On milk, the culture of shoes multiplies and develops more quickly, but also disappears quickly enough. On a banana peel (which needs just a little S = 1-3 cm2), the culture lives longer, but it also takes longer to breed, but there is a huge plus, there may not be milk in the house, and the peel of a ripe banana needs to be dried and can be used quite for a long time.

shoe culture.
If with technical part the process is quite simple, then everything else will have to be dealt with literally point by point.
First, where do you get the shoe culture?
There are several options.
The easiest, as I wrote above, is to ask for it from older comrades.
The benefits are just huge.
Firstly, you know that you have been given a pure culture without various crustaceans that can not only benefit, but also kill the shoe culture and harm the fish larvae. Those. you are sure to get pure material for work.
Or go to the reservoir yourself and scoop up water from the very bottom (preferably not much with silt) and bring the whole thing into the room.

If you settled on the second option, here you will need a piece of sheet glass (5 * 10 cm), a magnifying glass or a microscope, a pipette, or a syringe, and a sharply honed match.
At the beginning, take a drop of water and place it under a microscope, in it you will see an accumulation of various protozoa, and you can also easily distinguish shoes.

They are quite mobile
Take a drop of clean water (with a pipette) and place it next to a drop from a pond.
If there are a lot of protozoa, try to select the part where only ciliates are present (you only need a few full-fledged individuals), so if you are not able to separate them with a pipette, then connect 2 drops of water with a small canal with the tip of a match, unlike other simple ciliates, they will quickly swim across it, to fresher water.
So repeating several times you can get a fairly pure culture of ciliates.
After that, it is necessary to place the culture in an incubator,
Enough half a can of clean water, the bank is placed in a lit warm place, but not in direct sunlight.
As a nutrient, 1-3 drops of milk are dripped into the jar.
And the culture of ciliates is placed, which begin to multiply quickly enough.
Infusoria feed on bacteria that serve as food for it, so it often accumulates around pieces of organic matter, or near the surface if a bacterial film develops or if there is not enough oxygen.

This is what aquarists use to collect ciliates,
It is enough to place a small stalk of a plant from an aquarium in a jar, and shoes will begin to accumulate around it, which are collected with a pipette and placed as food for fish fry.
However, it should be remembered that along with the water that you collect from the incubator, the bacteria that the ciliates feed on can also get into the spawning tank, so in order to secure this process, you should first wait until the ciliates eat the bulk of the bacteria, and then feed the fry with them .
And still not a big recommendation.

Be as careful as possible in this process, do everything slowly, thinking through every step, remember the cleanliness of your equipment and your incubators is the key to a positive outcome.
Therefore, after the culture begins to deplete, select individuals, and thoroughly wash all equipment.
If you need a large amount of "dust" make several incubators, and use them alternately.

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“Infusoria shoe” - this was the name of the well-known ciliate for its similar body shape with the shape of the sole of a shoe. In fact, the ciliate class (Infusoria, or Ciliata) is very numerous and consists of about 6 thousand species of various simple organisms, but among them only the ciliate shoe is well known and popular, while the rest remain in the shadows on the pages of encyclopedias.

The body of the ciliates of the shoe is covered with cilia, with the help of which it moves in the water column, and during feeding it creates a water stream directed to the court with cilia, thereby urging food.

Where does the infusoria shoe live

The infusoria shoe lives in fresh stagnant water bodies. The value of the infusorian shoe in nature is only positive, because where the ciliate shoe lives, the water is always clean and transparent, and this is no coincidence, because bacteria and microalgae, as pollutants of water bodies, serve as food for ciliates and are largely eaten by them.

A large number of ciliates in water bodies is always associated with an abundance of food and vice versa. In natural reservoirs, the ciliate shoe can serve as the first starter food for fry.

In the aquarium hobby, when it comes to raising ciliate fry, the shoe can be invaluable. The infusoria shoe is the smallest living food; its size is 0.1-0.3 mm and it is perfect as starter feed for fry of small fish species, as well as fry fry fussy, who, apart from ciliates, do not want to see anything else. To provide fry with starter food, many aquarists breed ciliates at home.

How to breed ciliates at home

The infusoria slipper belongs to unicellular protozoa. The process of reproduction can be either asexual and consist of cell division, or sexual. You can dilute the infusoria shoe in an ordinary three-liter jar, but first you need to dilute food for the shoe in our case - these are bacteria.

For the reproduction of bacteria, you can use: dry banana peel, carrot wheels, unpasteurized milk, hay decoction. Water should only be taken from a healthy aquarium that has not previously been treated with medication.

Note: some aquarists in their videos demonstrate how, in order to extract as many ciliates from the aquarium as possible for their subsequent breeding, they remove the sponge from the filter and then squeeze all this dirt into a jar. I do not recommend you to engage in such stupidity because infusoria cannot live in a sponge and there is nothing there except dirt and debris.

Further, for the development of bacteria, we put it in a jar and only very little of anything from the listed products. For example, I always use 2-3 carrot wheels or a small 3-4 cm piece of dried banana peel.

Those who want to breed ciliates in milk need to know that no more than 2-3 drops are added to the jar, and as for hay broth, the concentration of which can be different for everyone, as they say by eye, or approximately no more than 2-3 tablespoons spoons.

We cover the jar with a lid and wait 1-2 days until the water in the jar becomes cloudy. When the water in the jar becomes cloudy, be sure to catch and throw out the carrot wheels or banana peel from the jar, and if you overdo it with milk or hay broth and an unpleasant smell appears, you need to dilute the water in the jar with water from the aquarium and if this is not done, the water in the jar will go rotten to such an extent that the infusoria is not in it, so that it cannot be bred in it, even the bacteria that have bred will die from here and an unbearable smell of rotten meat appears.

Notes: Some aquarists who have apparently never bred ciliates before demonstrate their skills in the videos. One has to be surprised at how much banana peel goes into a jar. Why breed rotten meat? Infusoria will not live in it!

After the water in the jar becomes cloudy from the bacteria that have bred, and you remove all the products for the propagation of bacteria from the jar, leave the jar alone for 7-10 days. All this time, at room temperature of 25-27 ° C, the ciliates in the jar will actively multiply, and when all the bacteria are eaten by them, the water will become transparent. Infusoria will be clearly visible to the naked eye, there is no unpleasant odor, and ciliates can be fed to fry by pouring with water from a jar.

Note: several types of ciliates live in aquarium water, among which there are those that the fry do not eat, and it is advisable to use only a pure culture of shoe ciliates to raise fry. You can find a pure culture of shoe ciliates among experienced aquarists or fish breeders or try to separate the shoe from other types of ciliates on your own.

Not a large piece of glass and a lens, (the size of the shoes is from 0.1-0.3 mm).

On milk, the culture of shoes multiplies and develops more quickly, but also disappears quickly enough. On a banana peel (which needs just a little S = 1-3 cm2), the culture lives longer, but it also takes longer to breed, but there is a huge plus, there may not be milk in the house, and the peel of a ripe banana needs to be dried and can be used quite for a long time.

If everything is quite simple with the technical part of the process, then everything else will have to be dealt with literally point by point.

First, where do you get the shoe culture?

There are several options.

The easiest is to ask for it from older comrades.

The benefits are just huge.

Firstly, you know that you were given a pure culture without various crustaceans that can not only benefit, but also kill the culture of shoes, i.e. you get obviously clean material to work with. Or go to a pond and scoop up water from the very bottom (preferably not much with silt).

At the beginning, take a drop of water and place it under a microscope, in it you will see an accumulation of various protozoa, and you can also easily distinguish shoes.

Shoes are quite mobile.

Take a drop of clean water (with a pipette) and place it next to a drop from a pond.

If there are a lot of protozoa, try to select the part where only ciliates are present (you only need a few full-fledged individuals), so if you are not able to separate them with a pipette, then connect 2 drops of water with a small canal with the tip of a toothpick, unlike other simple ciliates, they will quickly swim across it, to fresher water.

So repeating several times you can get a fairly pure culture of ciliates.

After that, it is necessary to place the culture in an incubator,

Enough half a can of clean water, the bank is placed in a lit warm place, but not in direct sunlight.

As a nutrient, 1-3 drops of milk are dripped into the jar.

And the culture of ciliates is placed, which begin to multiply quickly enough.

Infusoria feed on bacteria that serve as food for it, so it often accumulates around pieces of organic matter, or near the surface if a bacterial film develops or if there is not enough oxygen.

It is enough to place a small stalk of a plant from an aquarium in a jar, and shoes will begin to accumulate around it, which are collected with a pipette and placed as food for fish fry.

However, it should be remembered that along with the water that you collect from the incubator, the bacteria that the ciliates feed on can also get into the spawning tank, so in order to secure this process, you should first wait until the ciliates eat the bulk of the bacteria, and then feed the fry with them .

Living dust for fry

Live dust for fry - breeding at home

When purchasing an aquarium and starting fish in it, a novice aquarist usually does not think about what will happen next.

And then, as a rule, the following happens. Many, with a decent maintenance of their aquarium pets, sooner or later, the fish begin to spawn and in your home pond, unexpectedly, fry appear. Here the question immediately arises, but what to feed such small inhabitants of the aquarium, especially for the first days of their lives?

Now, in pet stores you can find a variety of dry food, including for fry. That's just the first couple I used them. Everything seems to be resolved ... but no! No matter how wonderful the purchased, dry food for fry is, live food will always be more useful and better. Dry food, in the form in which it is sold, cannot be given to fry, they must first be ground into dust and given in minimal doses so that the food is completely eaten and does not spoil the water, and this is not always possible. You need to feed the fry 6-8 times a day. Agree, it’s not very convenient, especially when there are other duties, for example, going to work))). What about live food? In articles about fish breeding, it is written that the so-called starter food for fry is the so-called LIVING DUST(ciliates). That's what I started to get away with!

What is it - living dust? And this is just the smallest microorganisms, among which there are ciliates. About 6,000 species of protozoa belong to the type of ciliates, one of them is the ciliate shoe.

Infusoria shoe (Paramaecium caudatum) is the simplest unicellular "animal", its dimensions are 0.1 - 0.3 mm. It feeds on bacteria. Propagated by dividing in two - approximately once a day, at a temperature of 24 - 26 ° C. It can be kept in any glassware at room temperature and is bred at home throughout the year. That's it, we will consider it as a starting live food for fry.

There are a huge number of recipes and methods for breeding ciliates on hay, banana peels, yeast, dried fruits, vegetables, milk, etc. I will tell you about the easiest, in my opinion, breeding method that I used in practice.

To do this, we need an incubator for ciliates - plastic or glassware from 3 liters. In my case, this is an ordinary 3-x liter jar. Pour 2-2.5 liters of boiled water at room temperature there, put a piece of dried banana peel and drip 5 drops of milk (2-3 drops). Now it remains to add the culture of ciliates. It can be taken from friends - experienced aquarists, just a few drops are enough. But, I didn’t have such an opportunity, and I just took a glass of water from the aquarium and added it to the jar - there are already a certain amount of ciliates in the aquarium water. Then, loosely covered the jar with a bag and put it in a shaded place - under the table. That's all!

The next day, my jar turned cloudy, which indicates that bacteria began to develop there, which is exactly what ciliates feed on. As mentioned above, ciliates reproduce by dividing in two once a day, therefore, their number doubles every day. After about a week, the water of the jar cleared up and I saw a huge number of white moving dots - these are ciliates. You can start feeding the fry, but first I fermented another jar of live dust, taking an already existing colony of ciliates.

For feeding live dust, I used an ordinary 2-cc medical syringe. He took out a jar from the shade - while all the ciliates were on top, near the surface, and carefully selected them with a syringe and poured them directly into the aquarium with fry. Try not to shake the water in the jar, in order to prevent a large amount of bacteria from entering the aquarium, this can adversely affect the fry, up to complete death. As the liquid with live dust is used up, it is necessary to add fresh boiled water at room temperature or old water from the aquarium to the jar to the desired amount. Also, you should not forget to feed the ciliates once every 2-3 days, with 3-4 drops of milk. In addition to banana peel and milk, other food ingredients can be added at the same time, such as vegetable skins and / or dried fruits, etc. The more varied these ingredients, the more nutritious the live dust.

I want to be careful. Do not get carried away with the number of ingredients, the water may fade. In such an environment, ciliates will not reproduce and will die.

Thanks to live dust, I reduced the number of fry feedings to three times a day, the ciliates are completely eaten, the water in the nursery aquarium does not deteriorate, the fry began to grow and develop faster.

As the juveniles grow, you can transfer them to a larger live food. Well, that's about all. If there are any questions on this topic, I will be happy to answer. Good luck to all!

Video about breeding live dust for breeding fish

Ciliates breeding at home

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 speed of movement is about 2 - 2.5 mm / s. The infusoria feeds on bacteria, microalgae, fungi (yeast). The ciliate finds its prey by sensing the presence of chemicals that are released by 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.

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 food and 2 - a one-time run into the "bacteria broth" to get an outbreak of ciliates.

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.

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 of 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 AQA-SHOP.RU

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

Dear Clients! In our store AQA-SHOP.RU fresh feed! see below.

Aulophorus (aka water snake) is a small worm (10, maximum 20 mm in length with a thickness of 0.2 mm), from pale pink to red. Widespread in freshwater from temperate to temperate climate zone to the tropics, that is, in almost any region of Russia, with the exception of the polar ones. Accumulations of worms can be seen at the bottom,

Sending live food for fish and fry to all regions

Rotifers are a type of microscopic animals united characteristic feature, namely: the presence of a rotary apparatus used for movement. There are about 1500 species of rotifers, 600 of which live in Russia. These animals are an important link in the food chain, making up a significant percentage of "live dust" - food for juvenile fish, large plankton and many invertebrates.

Corethra is the name of a mosquito larva from the genus Culicidae, Chaoborus and Corethra species, accepted among aquarists. Belonging to a particular species can only be determined by a biologist, and this is not important for an aquarist, and even more so for fish.

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Those who have not yet forgotten the school biology course will say with confidence that this is the most complex of unicellular organisms in its structure. That is, closely approached the multicellular in terms of development. However, those who are interested in breeding ciliates at home are not biologists.

Why is infusoria needed and what is it?

First of all, the length of the ciliates does not exceed half a millimeter, and in configuration it is similar to the sole of a shoe (hence the name). In nature, the ciliate shoe serves as the main food for fish fry, which are simply too tough for larger pieces of food. That's what it attracts attention ... not only the fish themselves, but also anglers and aquarists.

How to grow ciliates at home?

Any creature, even single-celled, needs nutrition. No exception and infusoria-shoe. The nutrient medium for it are microorganisms. This means that it is required to prepare an environment where they will be in sufficient numbers. Take any container and pour aquarium water into it. Try to collect it closer to the surface where the plants come out. Almost every aquarium with a formed biological structure already has its ciliates, even if there are not many of them yet.

Next, a lettuce leaf or pieces of banana peel are added to the container. Sometimes they are mixed with algal fish food (granular). You can always buy it in almost every specialized outlet. Some experts recommend separating these types of food into different containers.

Both cultures should be kept in the sun for at least a week (if longer, then even better). The optimal time for the growth of ciliates, thus, is summer. When the water turns dark, this is a sign that a bacterial colony has developed. Next, infusoria come into play. You can track their appearance even without microscopes and magnifying glasses: the water should turn pinkish.

Everything worked out? You can propagate the colony by taking another container with a similar bacterial culture and adding some water from the first one. Fry need to be fed literally with drops of water from the tank where ciliates live. If you add more food than the fry can eat, then the shoes will simply die, and their decay products will poison the water. Of course, it is better to start everything with water from an open reservoir, where there are much more ciliates. And in any case, it is advisable to have a microscope in order to assess the content of microorganisms accurately.

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 should be placed in a 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.

The common amoeba (kingdom Animals, subkingdom Protozoa) has another name - Proteus, and is a representative of the Sarcode free-living class. It has a primitive structure and organization, moves with the help of temporary outgrowths of the cytoplasm, often referred to as pseudopods. Proteus consists of only one cell, but this cell is a complete independent organism.

Habitat

The structure of an ordinary amoeba

Amoeba ordinary - an organism consisting of a single cell leading an independent existence. The body of the amoeba is a semi-liquid lump, 0.2-0.7 mm in size. Large individuals can be seen not only through a microscope, but also with an ordinary magnifying glass. The entire surface of the body is covered with cytoplasm, which covers the nucleus pulposus. During the movement, the cytoplasm constantly changes its shape. Stretching in one direction or the other, the cell forms processes, thanks to which it moves and feeds. It can push off algae and other objects with the help of pseudopods. So, in order to move, the amoeba stretches the pseudopod in the right direction, and then flows into it. The speed of movement is about 10 mm per hour.

The proteus does not have a skeleton, which allows it to take any form and change it as needed. The respiration of the common amoeba is carried out by the entire surface of the body; there is no special organ responsible for the supply of oxygen. During movement and feeding, the amoeba captures a lot of water. Excess fluid is excreted by a contractile vacuole that bursts to expel water and then re-forms. The amoeba has no special sense organs. But she tries to hide from the direct sunlight, sensitive to mechanical stimuli and some chemicals.

Food

Proteus feeds on unicellular algae, rotting residues, bacteria and other small organisms, which it captures with its pseudopods and draws into itself so that the food is inside the body. A special vacuole is immediately formed here, where the digestive juice is secreted. Amoeba nutrition can occur anywhere in the cell. At the same time, several pseudopods can capture food, then the digestion of food occurs immediately in several parts of the amoeba. Nutrients enter the cytoplasm and go to build the body of the amoeba. Particles of bacteria or algae are digested, and the remains of vital activity are immediately removed to the outside. The common amoeba is capable of throwing out unnecessary substances on any part of its body.

reproduction

Reproduction of the common amoeba occurs by dividing one organism into two. When the cell has grown enough, a second nucleus is formed in it. This serves as a signal to divide. The amoeba stretches out, and the nuclei diverge on opposite sides. Approximately in the middle there is a constriction. Then the cytoplasm in this place bursts, so there are two separate organisms. Each of them contains a nucleus. The contractile vacuole remains in one of the amoebas, and a new one arises in the other. During the day, the amoeba can divide several times. Reproduction takes place in warm time of the year.

Cyst formation

With the onset of cold weather, the amoeba stops eating. Its pseudopods are retracted into the body, which takes the form of a ball. A special protective film is formed on the entire surface - a cyst (of protein origin). Inside the cyst, the body is in hibernation, does not dry out and does not freeze. In this state, the amoeba remains until the onset of favorable conditions. When the reservoir dries up, the cysts can be carried by the wind over long distances. In this way, amoeba settle in other water bodies. With the onset of heat and suitable humidity, the amoeba leaves the cyst, releases pseudopods and begins to feed and multiply.

The place of the amoeba in wildlife

The simplest organisms are a necessary link in any ecosystem. The importance of the common amoeba lies in its ability to regulate the number of bacteria and pathogens on which it feeds. The simplest unicellular organisms eat decaying organic remains, maintaining the biological balance of water bodies. In addition, the common amoeba is food for small fish, crustaceans, and insects. And those, in turn, are eaten by larger fish and freshwater animals. These same simple organisms serve as objects of scientific research. Large accumulations of unicellular organisms, including the common amoeba, participated in the formation of limestone, chalk deposits.

Amoeba dysentery

There are several varieties of protozoan amoebas. The most dangerous for humans is the dysenteric amoeba. It differs from the ordinary one in shorter pseudopods. Once in the human body, the dysenteric amoeba settles in the intestines, feeds on blood, tissues, forms ulcers and causes intestinal dysentery.

The success of the laboratory workshop depends on the availability of handouts offered to students for study. The following are guidelines for collecting, maintaining, processing, and storing handouts. Collection and preparation of handouts can be done by students. To do this, they are given a specific summer task for collecting and instructions for preparing handouts.

Providing students with animals of the Protozoa sub-kingdom in sufficient quantities is possible only by cultivating them. You can cultivate protozoa directly at school (in the biology laboratory) or at home with students or members of the biological circle. Many protozoa can live together in a mixed culture, but pure cultures can also be prepared. certain types protozoa.

For keeping protozoa, only transparent (not green) glassware is used. The use of metal utensils is excluded, since the metal has bad influence on animals. Ordinary canning jars are suitable for keeping protozoa, but jars with a rectangular bottom, rectangular cups, crystallizers, yogurt and Petri dishes are preferable.

For the cultivation of protozoa, it is best to use rain or melt water. River, lake or pond water is boiled before use and filtered either through thick silk or through a paper filter. Since tap water is chlorinated, it is not suitable for keeping protozoa. If you have to resort to the use of tap water, then it is pre-defended for 7-10 days in a glass vessel (while the water is periodically stirred with a glass rod). During settling, chlorine gradually evaporates, and the water is saturated with oxygen. The water is filtered before use. But even settled water should be used carefully, as it is possible to ruin the culture of protozoa. As the water evaporates, fresh water is added to the vessel, keeping the same level as possible.

An important role in breeding protozoa is played by water temperature and lighting. The most favorable temperature is 18-23 °C. Care must be taken to avoid sudden temperature fluctuations. Many protozoa need good daylight, so protozoan culture jars are placed near a window, but direct contact should not be allowed. sun rays(for protection, you can use any screens - a curtain, a screen, etc.).

Do not allow water to be contaminated by any chemicals. When taking culture samples, pipettes specially designated for this purpose are used. Samples taken for viewing are poured into disinfectant solutions. Banks with cultures are kept with closed glass plates. This reduces water evaporation and dust contamination of the crop. For culture vessels, it is best to allocate a special place and not move them, thereby avoiding shaking of the liquid.

For the cultivation of protozoa, it is necessary to prepare in advance a nutrient medium rich in bacteria, which most often serve as food for them. There are several different recipes for preparing culture media.

1. A layer of hay dust or chopped meadow hay (leaves can be) 0.5 cm thick is placed in a glass jar and poured with rain or pond water. The jar is covered with glass and placed on the window, but so that it is protected from direct sunlight. After 3-4 days, water is added to the vessel from a polluted stagnant reservoir, at the bottom of which there is rotting vegetation. In this case, you should capture some silt from the bottom. After some time, a film appears on the surface of the liquid in the vessel. As a rule, various small ciliates first appear in the prepared medium, then amoeba (they should be looked for primarily in the film) and, finally, shoe ciliates (on average, 15 days after adding pond water).
2. Boil lettuce leaves in a gauze bag, which can also be grown on a windowsill. Pour pond water into a small jar and dip a bag of salad into it. After 3-5 days, the salad needs to be changed. In this nutrient medium, as a rule, a large number of ciliates appear.
3. For a few days, put pieces of gills or legs of a toothless into the water. Appearing ciliates are caught with a pipette and transferred to a vessel with salad.
4. If you take water from a dirty reservoir with rotting plants along with dirt and rot, cover it with glass and leave it to stand quietly for several days, then after a while you can get a lot of ciliates and amoebas.
5. If you add either 10-15 drops of milk, or a pinch of potato flour, or oatmeal (rice, wheat) broth to 200 cm3 of nutrient medium, you can get a large number of large protozoa. A decoction of cereals is prepared as follows: 50-100 g of cereals 20-30 minutes. boil in 1 liter of water. The resulting broth is poured into a bottle, corked and added to the culture by 5-10 cm3 as needed.
6. Prepare two infusions: 1) young leafy branches of birch or other trees in raw (not tap) water; 2) garden land (1/4 volume) in raw water (3/4 volume). After 10 days, both solutions are poured together in equal volumes, and then, after 6-8 days, amoebae are added to the prepared nutrient medium. If every 2-3 months amoebas are transplanted into a fresh nutrient medium, then they can be had throughout the year.
7. A large number of ciliates can be obtained in the infusion of pig brain. Cut 120 g of the brain into pieces and crush in water, filter through gauze after 12 hours. Adding water, bring the volume of the infusion to 1 liter, pour the resulting liquid into several glass jars and add 1 cm3 of hay infusion with ciliates to each. After 2-3 days, you can get a large number of ciliates. The film that forms on the surface of the liquid should be removed daily.
8. Boil grains of rice or wheat for a few minutes. At the same time, boil water in another flask, cool it, pour it into several cups (for example, Petri dishes) and place several prepared grains in each.

A nutrient medium prepared in any way should remain open for 7-10 days in order for as many bacteria as possible to multiply in it.

In the laboratory laboratory of biology, you can keep a “launched” aquarium, in which you can find the necessary invertebrates for classes. Before the start of the school year, a thin layer of sand (1.5 cm) is poured into a medium-sized aquarium and a layer of soil with rotting leaves and twigs (1-1.5 cm) taken from the bottom of the pond is placed on it. Elodea, pondweed and other aquatic plants are planted in the ground without washing them. They should occupy most of the aquarium, and the bottom surface free from plants is covered with a thin layer of sand. The aquarium is filled with pond water and left unattended, topped up from time to time with evaporating water. In the same aquarium, you can keep different mollusks, water larvae, etc.

A mixed culture of protozoa is prepared about a month before being used in class. Periodically, the culture is examined, samples are taken from the bottom, from the surface, from the middle of the vessel, while noting in which jar and in which place an accumulation of protozoa is found and which ones.

In mixed cultures, different protozoa develop, and their species composition is constantly changing. Therefore, it is better to have pure cultures to work with. To do this, a few drops of a mixed culture or water samples from reservoirs are applied to a glass slide without covering it with a coverslip. At a low magnification of the microscope, the prepared micropreparation is considered. Using a pipette with a strongly drawn end, the desired animals are caught and transferred to a vessel with a nutrient medium. The nutrient medium must be pre-boiled and cooled. The vessel is tightly closed with glass. Periodically take samples and observe the development of protozoa. To maintain the purity of the culture for a long time, the animals are periodically (about once a month) transplanted into a fresh nutrient medium.