Aric Washines's blog

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.

This summer I am joining Tawnya Peterson’s lab where I will be mentored by Michelle Maier.  We will be culturing rotifers in the lab and observing how well they do when consuming phytoplankton, which are infected by chytrid fungus.  Rotifers live in the estuary of the Columbia River and where they are an available food source for juvenile salmon.  The chytrids attach to the phytoplankton and deplete nutrients from the phytoplankton cell.  When the rotifers can eat the phytoplankton, they eat the chytrids as well as the zoospores they produce.    We s