A Healthy Population of Rotifers is Needed to Start the Experiment

It is not uncommon for the rotifer to be cultivated as feed for the home aquarium.  They can be purchased online and grown in your garage in a five gallon bucket with a small air pump.  In commercial production they are grown in large concrete tanks or big plastic containers, some of which look like large zip-lock bags.   You can feed them concentrated algae from a bottle or even feed them baker’s yeast.   We have been growing them on the lab bench in 500 ml and 2000 ml growing medium.  They eat algae, chlorella, that have been cultivated in the cold room under the adequate amount of light.  If the algae concentration is too high, that can create a harmful amount of ammonia for rotifers.  Chlorella grow quite well on our conditions, but we may need more algae cells per ml. for the experiment.  So a bottle of concentrated algae may be needed to keep them all happy.   We are growing them in a lab, where the conditions are being controlled and we note the feeding and rotifer amounts daily.  Rotifers are fairly hearty, but if the temperature, ammonia, oxygen, or pH levels are wrong the population could crash quickly.   The primary experiment has not yet begun, but the task of learning how to grow and maintain our rotifers at a healthy level has become a preliminary experiment itself.