periodic nano crashes

[lizardlady]

I have been producing nano which crashes periodically. I have found that if I try to start the culture with more then one third new water it will crash. I have heard from many people that they can dilute their nano up to 3/4 and still get viable cultures,,not me!
Unlike most people, I have to feed fertilizer every other day or it also dies. So I remove 1/3 nano, add new water with 1/2 ml fertilizer (I use one gallon glass jugs)
I use distilled water and all my equipment is sterilized using the pink bleach powder used in wine making. All equipment is also well rinsed. I use two 48" t-8s ith a light cycle of 14 hours. I used to keep lights on 24 hours but the nano is now in the fish room so 24 hr cycle isn't acceptable. I keep rotifers in the same room but they are thirty feet away and rarely ever do I find rotifers in the crashed greenwater.
Any ideas or has anyone had the same experience?

[Jclaas]

Please explain the crash as i can not see your culture as is

[Amie]

Are you putting the new water into the same container with the nano? Or starting up a new container?

[Jclaas]

Are you putting the new water into the same container with the nano? Or starting up a new container?

Amie can you please tell me more about the significance of this.

[Amie]

From experience, and from what I have heard from others, there is increased success when you start a brand new sterilized container, adding phyto from the old culture container into the new container. I do not have an answer as to why this is more successful, but I know that professional growers do this.

[Luis A M]

+1

[lizardlady]

Before harvesting the nano I check the culture vessel. If there is any kind of residue or "gunk" in the container I will move the nano to a new sterilized vessel, running the greenwater through a filter cloth first to catch debris. As for the crashes, the nano goes pale green and foams a lot, and then it turns yellow with a bunch of gunk settled on the bottom. I have tried adjusting air flow but it makes no difference. Something that I have noticed with the greenwater used for rotifers,, it doesn't turn to the color of tea,, it looks like rusty water, taking on a cloudy orange appearance. The rotifers do fine in the greenwater though.

[Luis A M]

Do you check it under the scope?

[VBMikr]

My nanno got "crashy" like that after growing great for a period of months... I gave up trying to keep it alive after a few weeks and just bought a new culture to start over. It's working great with the new culture.

I've read other accounts of nanno getting like this and they all seem to end up with retiring the culture. I wish I could find an answer about how to recover it once it enters this phase.

[Amie]

Even the very best breeders of phytoplankton have to replenish their stock once in a while. I have talked to one breeder in particular that will take a single cell and start with that one cell in order to insure a 100% pure strain.

The second that anything touch the air in your home, whether it is the phyto as you pour it into a new container (or take the top off of the growout container), tools you use, fertilizer you put in, etc., consider the stock contaminated. It just depends how bad of a contamination it is before you experience a crash.

[scooter413]

What do you look for under a microscope?

[lizardlady]

I have installed inline air filters and so far nano looks good. I think if I have one more crash that I will just use rotifer food for rotifer maintenance and keep a few store bought jugs around for gut loading the rotifers the day before a hatch. I am trying rg at the moment and it seems to be working quite well.

[Luis A M]

What do you look for under a microscope?

If your culture was contaminated by rotifers.

[scooter413]

What do you look for under a microscope?

If your culture was contaminated by rotifers.

My reason for tagging along on this thread is I am having the same problem as the original poster. After reading a lot on this subject I was able to borrow my sons jr microscope and looked at a dying culture and I saw lots of clear white type creatures swimming around in my culture. Now if I am not raising rotifers what could it be. I do have tigger pods and tisbee pods growing in the same room. I have moved to treating my water with bleach and built a air filter for my air pump so hopefully I too can go more than two weeks on a culture.

[lizardlady]

I look for rotifers, other algae and diatoms, etc. All cultures that I get irregardless of were I get them from have a small number of fast moving football shaped "critters" in them. I have noticed with cultures that are starting to crash that there are these clear little blobby things swimming around. I use distilled water and always refrigerate my fertilizer using a new pipette each time so I suspect these critters may be coming from the air? I have installed inline air filters to help with this but so far no luck.

[lizardlady]

Finally figured out the problem! Turns out that whatever is contaminating my greenwater can't handle lower ph. I noticed that the greenwater for my batch cultures for rotifer gut loading seemed to do just fine. I realised that the only difference between the batch cultures and the normal cultures was a lower ph. I lowered the ph in my normal cultures to 6.5 and I have had no contamination since! Even one batch that I thought was beyond saving recovered!
Thank you for all your suggestions

[scooter413]

PM sent to Lizardlady.