Super helpful video! Absolutely right that other videos with images seen under a microscope did not help me!

This is by far the most helpful video I have ever seen! I didn't realize the fuzzy crap at the top meant it was working and I have thrown away a few cultures that would have developed! Thank you so much for this, incredibly helpful!

Excellent video! I agree, all the other videos leave out exactly how variable the timing of it is. The visuals you provided are spot on, and I wish I had this video when I first started, but like you I mostly had to figure it out for myself. The one thing you left out is the fact that they are highly variable in how long the cultures last, as well. Some cultures will stay active for many weeks, while others are useable for less than two weeks. This can be really important because, I've had cultures crash on me right in the middle of raising out some really valuable fry leaving me with nothing to feed them. It is best to have multiple cultures going, and to start new cultures long before you need them. I've experimented with using lots of different veggies, and I found that the amount of veggies you start with and the type of veggies used, make a lot of difference in both the time to maturity and the duration it lasts for. Carrots take longer to start, but last longer once they get going. Cruciferous veggies like brocoli, work really well but smell SO much worse. Beans are bad for smell too. I have found a 50 50 mix of carrots, and zuccini or other squash, works really well for me. PS I totally agree that live food is essential for raising out egg scatterer fry. This comes from 40 years of fish breeding experience. I don't even bother with hard boiled egg yolk or other such non-living foods. They mostly just foul the water. First food is infusoria, followed by vinegar eels, micro-worms, artemia nauplii, and then finally grindal worms, in that order. Cheers Randy

Thank u so much 4 sharing such precious and hard 2 find info in a simple,short and 2 the point video. I got almost all answers from your video starting 4m when to how.

Thank you so much for this video. I snicker every time you call them cooties. Now I feel confident in my ability to culture infusoria. It's amazing how little we know about the natural world and decide to bring nature inside without being prepared. Fortunately, my rainbow fish fry spotted Infusoria on the glass inside my nursery tank because I was nervous as heck that I was going to starve them to death. Again, thanks for the video. Going ahead and subscribing just to hear you say cooties again.

Lol! I will henceforth refer to infusoria only as "cooties". "What do you mean, 'It stinks'? Of course it stinks! It's cooties! If my baby fish don't get cooties from me, who will they get them from?! Sheesh!" Thanks for the info... and for making me smile.

Excellent well balanced informative video on how to propagate infusoria.

Very informative, thank you.

Great and very informative video.. I've got four batches of betta fry and I'm at my wits end trying to find suitable live food for them.. I've fed them hard-boiled egg yolk twice a day but they're obviously not feeding, as you rightly pointed out, they need live bait. I've got five different concoctions of infusoria going and finally finally today I saw swirls of them moving vertically downwards exactly as in your video.. I've got my batch ready in about 5 days.. i used a wide lipped jar, i covered the lip with cotton cloth and a rubber band, and, this is very important i think, i swirled the concontion twice a day.. once early morning and after sunset.. Thanks for the video..You could make one on microforms too

Sir you are just perfect example of excellence ! I am culturing my infusoria using... pondwater, aquarium water, boiled vegetables , soil , milk . Today is 11th day no change.. I stared 3 cultures two of them turned black and smelling gross. As all three are smelling gross but the third one is still cloudy . You are absolutely right people are fooling that they got infusoria in two days , 7days , 10 days ... But me over 10days not a single organism. Now I feel, better to get paramecium culture fortunately there is a seller in india which gives home delivery in just 275rs(4$) for 100 ml .good to start a culture.

Thank you for answering a lot of my question. 👏🏾

Thanks for the learning

Thank you for this post. I think it’s good to see both the success and failure so we know what to look for when growing infusoria cultures, and that has been missing on other posts on growing infusoria. I’m also going to look at breeding white cloud minnows outside this summer, (Southern Hemisphere summer) but will try inside breeding later on too. Best regards, Brian. (Daughters logged in the ipad)

I just lost my first fry trying to use dry food + microworms... heard that microworm could be food for fries that can’t take bbs after free swimming but it is somehow still too big for gourami fries. I started my infusoria on the same day those first 50 fries were hatched and that infusoria take ages to develop! Now after a week or so there are only 10 out of 150 left and the infusoria is still not ready yet despite that I had a desk lamp shining on it 24/7

Thanks a lot sir very helpful from the first minute itself .... And I appretiate your wonderful explaination.

This is very helpful

This made me laugh, and thanks so much. This was a good, quite good video, guy!

Wow....thank you soooo much....learned a lot!!!😃👍🏻🐟

This video cleared my delusionary mind. thank you

Excellent video thanks Jay George in uk

I've consistently failed to culture infusoria, but then again, I've always given up way to soon based on your experiences and comments. Time for one more go methinks!

Thank you for this. It helped a lot. Tc

I used red cabbage the water is really pretty and changes color. Nearly every day it is a new hue.

Thanks Jay for telling the truth and for confirming my experiences, which are similar to yours... KZfaq can be false, for people wanting to have more views with fantastic uploads, showing the best and quickest results. The reality is different. Why can't fishkeepers not be more realistic about the information ? I'm trying yeast now to see if I can speed up the progress (following another fishtuber, but I become more critical about it all)... I love the reality you show !! Good upload.

Great video, very informative indeed !!!

Very informative thank you 😊👍👍

So true about the time line and the other videos online. Just wondering why the bottles were sealed as most comments spoke of keeping it open. Thanks for the info. My Dwarft Rainbow fry seem as small as infusoria!

I tried this for the first time a couple weeks ago and it smelled so bad I thought it was useless after a couple days. I should've waited a lot more...oh well I'm doing it again now that I learned more about how it works.

Great vid!!

Very helpful, thank you for documenting! Did you try using yeast at some point?

Hey, thanks for this. Very helpful!!!! I need these critters for my beta fry.

Good informative video, Jay. Some observations I made which are different from some of the other videos I watched is that you used a soda bottle which has a very small opening instead of say, a mason jar. Also, the bio load you placed in there initially gave the bacteria a lot of work to do before the cooties can begin feeding on them. One video I watched showed the guy dropping in two cubes of dried turnip about the size of a pair of dice and he had his cooties ready in just over a week. So perhaps the small opening (minimal surface area for oxygen transfer) coupled with the heavy bio load might have delayed it a bit. Those are just my initial thoughts. On another note, the Golden White Cloud tank looks great! Could you give us a rundown on what plants and equipment you used and where did you get your microscope? Thank you for a great video.

Thanks for letting me know as I have recently started two jars and have been wondering when, and if in time, I will have ''cooties'' for my fry that are yet to hatch! I have parent Rice Fish. Love your sense of humour, too. Since it 'stinks' so much where on earth will I keep it during the winter months. Maybe they can withstand our cold English weather.

Thanks I watched marks aquatics and tried to make it but I couldn't do it now watching this I will leave it longer

Great video Jay. I'm a novice but I'm curious, were there any air holes drilled in the bottlecaps or do you even need them? Going to take a stab at growing my own.

You did this the natural way (nothing wrong with that, but...) and that is why it took so long. Boost the bacteria bloom with bread yeast. Boost the green water with spirulina. No need for disgusting decaying vegetables and the smell is bearable. 2 days to a week time and you will have a great culture.

Super 👌👌👌👏👍👍👍👍👍

super simple and just need 3 days to culture. 1. water from the old aquarium or from the filter for starter 2. yeast 3. container (transparent) how to do it 1. mix the yeast with freshwater ( natural water).. how much yeast...half small spoon for 2 liter 2. add to the container (2-liter bottle) old aquarium water 3. add step number 1 to step number 2 4. put in the sun 5. you can see the micro thing in 2 days after feeding the fry and small fish. repeated the step or add more yeast to the container question 1. is smell good or bad.. it will be small good 2. direct feeding the fray from the water with micro things?.. YES

Give a try to this method may it help. Use cabbage leafs also and stire the culture from second day. I got better results in short period of time. Hope it helps.

Thank you so much I thought I was doing something wrong as nobody mentions how long or even if the culture would smell for, I am at the stage were the smell is getting the best of me. I have a very sensitive nose I can actually smell the difference in each stage. The first stage just stinks to the point you wonder if its worth it. Can you imagine when visitors come yo visit. I stopped people coming to my house. stage two it starts to smell different its a thickly in the throat its bordering on bearable week three still the same but the smell has a kind stinky sweetness to it haven't got to stage five you have made it easyier to go foreword I was feeling like I wanted to give up. Thank you for really telling us the plain truth I have to add why do people say I even read science papers the all say it will only smell for a couple of days ummm it stinks does it ever stop?

Effective way would be putting dried plantain leaf piece directly into the tank until the water turns to light brown shade because of the Tanine from the plantain which is good for the fishes and to maintain water quality..after few days the infusoria will form without damaging the water quality (actually it stopped my fishes from dying and i don't know why).the fries can find infusoria around the plantain leaf. (you can remove it after 1 -2 week when leaf becomes very thin)

So, unless water gets clear infusoria not developed, right?

try adding 1 or 2 tablespoon of fish pellets and store them in a dark place, or you can cover the culture container with black cloth or plastic, based on my experience infusoria will begin to appear on day 7 ,i never selaed my culture tank, i put insect net to cover the jar and tie them with rubber band to avoid mosquitos and other insect laying their eggs

I know this is an old video so I'm not sure if you're still replying to comments on it. I was wondering how long a mature culture lasts for? Is there a way to keep it going longer? And does seeding a new culture with critters from an existing one help speed it up?

Hey Jay, what can you say about green water (it turned green after few weeks of clean water with infusoria) ? Do you find infusoria there?

Thanks. Only thing I'm left wondering about - is there any smell from this?

My friend you can create infusoria with in 12 hour from the culture setting time.for that you want to use green algae water and yeast

People don’t know that ammonia while good for the bacteria, is not so good for the infusoria. You can take out some of the bacteria water and add fresh water to cut the ammonia level. This will speed up infusoria production. Also, you don’t need to start all over when making a new batch. Just seed new batch with the old batch.

It goes faster with yeast. Aquarium water, some mess from filter and add little yeast. You will get it mature in 1-2days😉

For what it's worth, you're the only one I've seen that caps the container. My cultures usually mature in a week to ten days but my containers are open and I stir the scum at the top. Did you try any in something other than capped bottles?

ok very interesting. i put some pond water in a glass with some moss and left it in my window and saw little things all over. ive been trying to identify them sense. seems i have daphnia and infusoria.

Do we need to keep the bottle lid open or closed all the time? doesn't the culture need oxygen to grow bacteria?

One thing you did not mention or maybe you didnt do is to also mix it lightly once in a while so to have oxygen infusion on water, just one of the methods i saw on youtube.

2 to 3 days me

Hi, I started my infusoria culture and it clouded up very quickly. In a couple of days, I used a baster to drop cloudy water into my Endlers livebearers tank. All the babies and the rest of the fish were very interested in the clouds and I thought I was done. I’ve put some of my culture into my other tanks and the fish seem delighted by it. I’m starting to understand that the clouds are bacteria and not little beings that you can see. But the fish seem very happy. What is going on?? Is there a problem with feeding fish fry the cloudy water?

Here's my experience, you may find it helpful. The organisms you are trying to raise, infusoria, are a collection of critters, not just one type. In order to breed and grow they need to eat, what they eat is bacteria. The bacteria can only grow if they also have nutrients to feed off. They will feed on any organic plant material which is why we put lettuce, broccoli, green beans, cabbage etc into the container. We boil them first in order to speed up their decomposition so that the bacteria have plenty of food. The bacteria don't care what their source of nutrition is, lettuce, broccoli etc all work, the downside is that when these materials break down they absolutely stink - I think you may have briefly mentioned it. It is over a decade since I used any of these vegetables as my initial food source, I now exclusively use banana peels and I don't bother to boil them either. The inside layer of the banana peel is already soft and squidgy before you even start - they are ready to break down right from the off. I have never found it takes more than a couple of days to get the thick bacterial bloom we are looking for. The main advantage to this method is that there is virtually no smell - I keep my cultures on the window sill in my bedroom, I certainly would not do that with a rotten cabbage of broccoli smell permeating the room. I would not say there is no smell at all but any you do get is just faintly sweet and not unpleasant. Every culture I have done this way has been ready to harvest within 10 days and I've been doing it this way for over a decade.

I have silvertip tetra fry who will be free swimming in 2 days, and my 4 days old infusoria glass jar is still very cloudy. Gonna try making the ground up spirulina + flake food powder, and feed them the part that stays floating in the water.

this is what called "content"

great video. How long will a successful culture last? Any tips to keep it thriving? How do you avoid divorce when the wife has had enough of the smell? lol

Have you ever tried keeping the culture outdoors? It sure does reek!

😆

It probably took so long because you had the lids on and such a small opening. They need oxygen. You also need to stir it 3 times a day for aeration.

I wish I watched that video before I threw away my culture down the toilet earlier today...

use yeast instead of green leaf

This culture smell so good ya bad..??👍

Happy Diwali ; totally agree with your remarks about time period this type of culture takes. can I have your email address to have your opinion about some other queries for culturing rotifiers/infusoria

I threw away since they were stink 😅 dang

You never consider to inoculate a fresh culture from a 'mature', to speed up maturation?

But does it stink? 😜

Thanks for the learning