MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

As you know, once you get a protist/bacterial cycle going, you can start new colonies from old media and go for a long time. I used to buy from Carolina but since they do not ship domestically if that address is an international courier (I live in the Dominican Republic), I cannot buy from them.

I know of places that sometimes sell bales of hay and I could grab a chunk of that but it is often not available in the city where I live.

What are some substitutes that I could use to get a culture going?

A bit of dirt, lawn clippings, a sample of standing water, you name it. You'll get something just by leaving a jar of water open on a windowsill for a while, but seeding it with clippings/dirt is likely to be faster and a water sample faster yet.
A bit of food for them, such as a few crumbs of humus from the compost bin, drop of plant fertilizer, drop of milk, or the like should speed things along.

Straw.

Thanks. Duh! I have a chicken coop filled with potting soil for waste management. I think that's it! Now that I think about it, find a medium that's approriate to your organisms. I even have powder for electrolyte solution . . . I believe that Protista are pretty much ubiquitous, even in the air (thus your idea of just leaving an open jar), and bacteria as well (endospores). I guess it's a matter of distribution, how many where and how long you want to wait.

Some materials may be loaded with bacteria or worms. You have to be a little picky. I would not use manure for instance.

I used straw on mine and it worked very well.

Hi,
you can also set up a pond aquarium that can run stable for a long time. Hay is probably available in pet shops.

Bob

A banana peel in a small jar filled with tap water has always worked for me. Especially for Paramecia. It remains productive for a week at least.

A banana peel in a small jar filled with tap water has always worked for me.

I have tried three times and never been successful. I get lots of small ciliates (visible at 400x magnification) after three days or so, but they never grow to a satisfactory size and after a week they are mostly gone. What am I doing wrong?

TIA

There are many types of hay, but many of the common ones for horses are just dried grass. Fescue, Timothy, Bermuda, and Orchard grass are all very common. You can undoubtedly just use some grass clippings from your yard or neighborhood park.

@ ET AL:

What about boiling the grass/hay? Some sources say to boil it; others don't mention it. I will take two specimen jars, one boiled, one not, and see if there is a difference . . .

linuxusr wrote: ↑

Sun May 30, 2021 12:44 am

@ ET AL:

What about boiling the grass/hay? Some sources say to boil it; others don't mention it. I will take two specimen jars, one boiled, one not, and see if there is a difference . . .

Boiling will do two negative things:
1. Kill most living creatures, except some bacteria.
2. Decompose some of the plant tissue, destroy cell contents, i.e. it will accelerate "rotting".
I do not see any logic in boiling grass, unless you want to isolate and preserve hardy species, those that can withstand 90-100 Celsius.

The point of boiling is to intentionally kill off any unwanted organisms and to initiate the release whatever nutrients are available in the vegetable matter. These aren't negative things. Whatever critters you add to the medium can then use the broken down grass or hay or whatever the boiling made available to grow and multiply. Using a "sterilized" media allows to to produce a "pure" culture of whatever creature you can buy from any reputable biologics supplier.

That said, you can get things going by simply leaving a fistful of lawn clippings in a glassful of non-chlorinated water for a few days without boiling anything. In most cases, you'll get a veritable protist zoo in a matter of days.

What is so great about hay?

I always add a few grains of white rice to my water sample tanks about once a month. Doing that promotes bacterial growth which in turn promotes life of all sorts. Especially amoeba. If you basically want infinite amoeba, add some grains of white rice. I for some reason get lots of amoeba choas. But you have to go somewhere and get a water sample with sediment and plant matter and such.

If you over do it with the rice though you will get terrible bacterial blooms that will ruin your tank though.

A few days I cut some grass from the front yard, put it in a jar, and poured bottled spring water over it. Then I left it overnight and looked at a drop the next day.

Nothing.

Perhaps I will see something in a few days, but it seems to be a struggle to find many microorganisms in my yard. One of these days I need to get out to a lake far enough from home that the water is not acid and perhaps has fish.