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Question: How can you easily kill pods and microfauna

zeroinverse

zeroinverse

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I am in the process of growing aiptasia & Berghia.
Ideally, I'd like to use my old water change water for that purpose instead of using new saltwater.

I am guessing there are pods and other microorganisms in the water that will cannibalize berghia nudibranch larvae/babies. I am less worried about microfauna in the aiptasia water, but ultimately the aiptasia and some of the aiptasia culture water will make it into my berghia culture tanks.


Questions:
How can I kill the microfauna from my water?
Can microfauna (fan worms & pods) eggs survive in the water? And how can I "kill" then when they hatch?
What other things do I have to watch out for?

I'd rather not buy bulk cheap salt and mix separately from my reef tank salt every time I need saltwater for my berghias & aiptasia.

Any zooplankton experts out there?
 
I'm not a zooplankton expert (you might want to ask Gresham aka BAYMAC), but how about running the make up water through a uv sterizer ?
 
funny is when i was culturing berghia grew better in my main tank in their netting enclosure. Babies and lots of egg masses every week. But when I transfered them to their tiny biocube, they stopped breeding and just withered away ....
 
650,

I have been keeping them fed in 2.5 gal tanks and they seem fine.
If you have pictures of your netting setup. Laying eggs. And I have been taking egg masses out to growout in shallow plastic containers.

I know they hatched since I see tiny squigglies moving around when I shine white LED light. Since I have aiptasia in those containers, they shoul eat them over time as they grow.

One of my 2.5 gal got infested with fan worms when I first started culturing them. The other culture tank is fine (for now).

That is why I wanted to know how to kill microfauna in my saltwater before I add water.
 
Offhand I can think of two ways to effective prevent "contamination" of your culture:

1. Sterilize with bleach
I believe the typical recipe is 1 TBSP of household bleach for every gallon of SW, or 1 cup bleach for every 50 gallons of SW. After 24 hours you can aerate to gas out the chlorine, or use sodium thiosulfate. If you expect a lot of die-off, you may want to allow the water to settle and only use the top of the water. This method has been around for a long time (since the 1950's IIRC) and is also used by some folks that use NSW. If you go this route you should probably double-check the information above.

2. Use a good diatom filter
A good diatom filter should remove almost all organisms of concern.

HTH!
 
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