I have three bottles of infusoria that I put in the living room, as outside living room is cold. My wife complain about the smell but it is only at the best of the bottles. So is this something that can be harmful to our health?
Is keeping infusoria culture at living room bad for health?
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Lol, it might be bad for your personal health, because aromas like this can easily tip a spouse over the edge; much blood, many deaths...
I haven't done infusoria recently, but back when I regularly had cultures going, I found that they only lasted a short time before becoming a little too pungent to keep inside the house. A typical culture would be set up, would produce usable quantities of micro-critters for a couple days and would then become unpleasantly ripe; I simply started new ones every day or every other day so I always had one or two at their peak, and ditched them shortly afterwards. I would rarely harvest a culture for even two days, more typically just a single day. Sounds like a PITA, I know...and it is...but typically you only require infusoria for maybe a week or so until the fry grow large enough to eat baby brine shrimp or other foods.
I also recall that a certain percentage of cultures, maybe one out of five, would just go straight from "brand-new" to "not-gonna-bring-that-inside!" in just a day or so, without ever being useful as a food source. Raising this stuff is not an exact science; little problems are just part of the joy of maintaining containers of rotting vegetable matter in the home...
I haven't done infusoria recently, but back when I regularly had cultures going, I found that they only lasted a short time before becoming a little too pungent to keep inside the house. A typical culture would be set up, would produce usable quantities of micro-critters for a couple days and would then become unpleasantly ripe; I simply started new ones every day or every other day so I always had one or two at their peak, and ditched them shortly afterwards. I would rarely harvest a culture for even two days, more typically just a single day. Sounds like a PITA, I know...and it is...but typically you only require infusoria for maybe a week or so until the fry grow large enough to eat baby brine shrimp or other foods.
I also recall that a certain percentage of cultures, maybe one out of five, would just go straight from "brand-new" to "not-gonna-bring-that-inside!" in just a day or so, without ever being useful as a food source. Raising this stuff is not an exact science; little problems are just part of the joy of maintaining containers of rotting vegetable matter in the home...
I too have not grown infusoria for a while, but I can say this -
- Indeed, one needs to keep making new cultures so ripe ones can be gotten rid of, as older cultures stink, and actually the micros in older cultures are not the ones that you want to feed the baby fish with (it gets colonized by other micros, including bacteria, and fungi, which are undesirable). - - If you start the culture with water and lettuce or other vegetable matter, those can be removed after day one (mostly needed only as inocula), leaving only the green water. That makes the culture last a little longer without funking up so fast. I know that some people add a tiny amount of sugar to feed the micros.
- And certainly, the baby fish quickly become able to eat larger food.
Another very nutritious type of food that is easy to work with and does not rot, is small pieces of hard-boiled egg YOLK. Tiny pieces dissolved in your fingers into the water. Fish like it, it is a rich food, and it is easy to administer. Water quality must be maintained via siphoning any excess and water changes.
Good luck!
- Indeed, one needs to keep making new cultures so ripe ones can be gotten rid of, as older cultures stink, and actually the micros in older cultures are not the ones that you want to feed the baby fish with (it gets colonized by other micros, including bacteria, and fungi, which are undesirable). - - If you start the culture with water and lettuce or other vegetable matter, those can be removed after day one (mostly needed only as inocula), leaving only the green water. That makes the culture last a little longer without funking up so fast. I know that some people add a tiny amount of sugar to feed the micros.
- And certainly, the baby fish quickly become able to eat larger food.
Another very nutritious type of food that is easy to work with and does not rot, is small pieces of hard-boiled egg YOLK. Tiny pieces dissolved in your fingers into the water. Fish like it, it is a rich food, and it is easy to administer. Water quality must be maintained via siphoning any excess and water changes.
Good luck!
Hello; I am single so do keep infusoria around a bit long. A basic rule of life is to avoid pissing off anyone who prepares our food.
Lol, I have a small bar-size beer fridge in my fishroom/man-burrow. It contains a great deal of "stuff" besides beer; if any of those other items ever appeared in the upstairs kitchen fridge...I shudder to think of the consequences...
Lol, I have a small bar-size beer fridge in my fishroom/man-burrow. It contains a great deal of "stuff" besides beer; if any of those other items ever appeared in the upstairs kitchen fridge...I shudder to think of the consequences...
I'm only keep frozen foods like bloodworms, Mysis Shrimp, Tilapia in our freezer because my wife has a nose like a bloodhound the slightest funk and I hear my name ?
Between Infusoria and Micro worms don't no which stinks the worst.
I can actually get away with quite a lot of frozen foods upstairs; my bar fridge is way too small, and has an almost-nonexistent freezer section, for storing big slabs of frozen stuff.
But...my problem is the live food. Live Earthworms are the biggie lately; but in the past live adult brine shrimp and live tubifex or black worms were all regular in my house. My wife is of the odd opinion that nothing in the refrigerator should still be moving; as strange as that sounds, I try to humour her because I know she puts up with a lot...
We won't even talk about the taxidermy freezer I had in my previous home...
I have tried to do infusoria in the past and have never been successful. I do vinegar eels now. I have 4-5 whiskey bottles in the fish room that maintain my cultures and I haven’t needed eels in several months so they are getting crowded. I don’t notice any scent from them either.