Infusoria & stuff

Well... yuck and also amazing. Why yuck? I cultured infusoria a month ago with banana peel and egg yolk, not only it didn't produce the infusoria I needed at that time, it also stink! (by the way, did I mention slimy?) That's a failed attempt. 

So few days later, I added green water instead, taken from a nearby pond, sprinkled some yeast, and waited for a week. It's better than the black banana egg yolk slimy nose torturing infusion thing, and my fry actually eat some of those stuff, but I soon ran out, so most of the fry died of starvation, leaving only 6.

Amazingly I came across the hay method while Googling(Google is my friend :) ) , so I started adding hay to my culture. A few days later, the water turned cloudy and started to stink! Added aeration to the tub. I think all the rotting hay is depleting the oxygen, causing the culture to smell funny. A day later, the water started to clear up, and I can see lots of tiny movement in the water. Let's see how this goes...  

Update! 

After 3 weeks of adding the hay into the tub, the water turned greenish and contains lots of cyclops, daphnia and other micro life. I scoop some up and fed to the fry. 

The picture below shows my back up, just in case of crashes... all have hay and occasional yeast food added when I have the time.

This is my grindal worms culture. I bought my initial culture from Jit Sin, during MAHA 2012. Now I have 3 cultures going strong. Instead of using soil or peat as medium, I use scrubber pads, with 3 or 4 layers in each plastic container. Picture below is one of my grindal worm culture.

I also bought some microworms starter culture from BettaVillage during MAHA 2012. Since then I subculture and this is the result. I just add bread and moisten it with a bit of water.