|
Post by Apoplast on Dec 4, 2012 22:46:00 GMT -5
Good day everyone - I was inspired about the utility of feeding your plants collembola by DVG's shot of his P. colimensis where Drew noticed the abundance of tropical collembola on the old leaves. First I looked into buying a tropical collembola starter culture similar to the species DVG uses. The problem is that I want to use them to feed my winter growing sundew seedlings. Shortly thereafter I read that refrigeration will kill tropical collembola cultures. Bummer. I try to keep my grow area between about 15 and 5 C to keep the plants happy. Then I realized I already had collembola! They just weren't in the density I need to feed my seedlings. In fact, I have two morpho-species! Below I have included photos of the two morpho-species. This is my first attempt at macro-photography. Are the pictures good. No! But hopefully they get the point across (trying to take shots of moving critters that are less than 0.5mm long has given me a whole new respect for people who take good macro shots, yes, like you Devon). This is the dark morpho-species. Short abdomen. Cute. This is the longer of the two species, but they never went anywhere I could get a clear shot of them. They are that I am calling the white morpho-species. This is the best shot I got, sorry. I have decided to try to isolate these species from my pots and culture each one separately. I have never cultured collembola before, but I am going to try to use the jar method because it looks like it will be easy to get them on the plants from the cultures. I know that's a different species but I'm hopeful the same technique will work. So, here's where I ask for advice. How do people typically culture collembola (DVG I'm looking at you here and any one else who's got experience)? If not on as clean a surface as plaster, how do you isolate the critters to add to your pots? These collembola on my pots aren't going anywhere, so I'll have lots of chances to get this right. And I'll post about my efforts here - hopefully with improving pictures of these little guys. Thanks for reading, and for any advice!
|
|
|
Post by shoggoths on Dec 6, 2012 23:17:44 GMT -5
Hi Apoplast,
I'll try to take pics of my springtales collector / dispenser nasty machine device this week-end. I'm a little shy about it but I think it will help some people feeding sprintails to their plants.
For my culture, I started out with a few sprintails on LFS but it was not great. Then a coworker give me a small bag of vermicompost (? I hope you understand this word, it is kitchen compost made from earthworms that we can do and keep inside). So I put it in a box that I keep in the dark below 20C (to keep mite at bay). Every now and then I put everything organic in there (lettuce,peel, black tea leaves etc.) and rice and couscous. They're going like crazy on couscous. Now my box is full of sprintails so I can use them easyly to feed every plants I have.
|
|
|
Post by dvg on Dec 7, 2012 15:43:26 GMT -5
That culturing media sounds good Shoggoths.
I'm still experimenting with my media and have had some issues with culturing these creatures.
I'm not sure peat is a good media for growing the Tropical Springtails, so i've been trying some others.
Apo i would recommend finding some tropical springtails - the ones the dart froggers are feeding their froglets with.
From experience, i've found the tropicals springtails to multiply so much faster than the locals.
dvg
|
|
|
Post by shoggoths on Dec 7, 2012 20:21:07 GMT -5
Ok, This is it. The Device : Once assembled: The food : Then, all I have to do is to aspirate the sprintails in the cup via the upper straw. The small cloth is to prevent me from eating them. The result : Then you can freeze the sprintails and give them with a tweeser or take a pipette (like in the pic bellow) and take some at a time to blow on the desire leaf. The sprintails having nowhere to go are now more easy to catch All comments are welcome but keep in mind there's young one that come here.
|
|
|
Post by vinnymc on Dec 7, 2012 20:59:17 GMT -5
I had to many springtails before when i used dollar store soils and took seeds from my grandparents lawn and they turned out to be marigolds. I looked at them one day and i used a clear pot so i could see everything and i seen hundreds of springtails.
|
|
|
Post by Apoplast on Dec 7, 2012 21:52:35 GMT -5
Hi DVG - I had considered using tropical springtails, but I've heard that if you refrigerate them they die, and figure I need to be able to release them live to hop into the waiting tentacles of my seedlings. Given that the seedlings are tuberous and Cape winter growing dews, and so my grow area is about 5-15C, tropicals seemed out. But do you feed yours frozen like Shogg?
Hi Shogg - You rock! Whenever I need help you are there. Thanks for the pictures too! I didn't figure a pooter (a.k.a. aspirator) would result in such a clean sample. Maybe I can use some mushroom compost and yeast to increase the numbers of my "native" collembola in my collection. Although, feeding frozen collembola could let me use tropical cllembola, nowhere in my house during the winter is really a good temperature for them. Plus, my rational for using collembola is that I could dump them on the soil surface alive and let the seedlings catch them on their own, reducing my workload. Sorry. This has become a stream of consciousness. Okay, I am going to use your method to try to culture my "native" collembola, and then try the jar method as an experiment to more cleanly culture them.
As always, I'm pretty transparent, so you'll hear if this was a good idea or a bad idea. Thanks again Martin and Doug! I really appreciate the voices of experience!
|
|
|
Post by hal on Dec 7, 2012 21:54:45 GMT -5
They're going like crazy on couscous. Now my box is full of sprintails so I can use them easyly to feed every plants I have. Must be Moroccan springtails
|
|
|
Post by shoggoths on Dec 8, 2012 10:32:18 GMT -5
Hi Apoplast, I'm glad to help. I'll wait for you at the corner when my tuberous come out I must add, I only freeze the springtails when I want to put them specifically on a small plant or seedling. When I use the pipette, I blow them alive over my plants. Yesterday I feed nearly 100 plants in less than 15 minutes. With this method, some springtails fall out of plants and they quickly take cover in the mix (they hate light). I don't know if they come out at night but a rarely see some on the leave otherwise than when I fed the plants. Hey hey hey indeed
|
|
|
Post by 31drew31 on Dec 8, 2012 11:41:04 GMT -5
Nice little contraption Martin.
When I cultured springs for some frogs, I used the tropical variety on wet cocopeat and fed mushrooms and yeast. I just kept them around room temperature. To feed I flooded the culture (springs float) and poured the water with springs through a filter to isolate the springs.
|
|
|
Post by Apoplast on Dec 9, 2012 18:21:15 GMT -5
Hi Shogg - I'll be happy to give advice on any tuberous dews you want to grow (although with Byblisera here now, my novice status with those species is returned).
Hi Drew - I think I'm going to try to get the numbers up first by culturing my "native" collembola on mushroom compost, and feed them a little fish food and yeast. Whichever species does best moves on to round two - jar culture on plaster and charcoal.
Now I just need to find that pooter in the basement and I can start collecting.
|
|
|
Post by Apoplast on Feb 15, 2013 21:44:45 GMT -5
Good day all - Well the good news is that one of the species I collected from my pots, the silvery one, has been multiplying in the jar I placed them in. So I now have a nascent colony of collembola that continue to be active and multiply in fairly low temperatures. And just in time for the new Drosera cistiflora seedlings too! Sorry there are no pictures; I've given up on trying to photograph these little guys. For now, you'll just have to take my word that they are reproducing.
|
|
|
Post by 31drew31 on Feb 15, 2013 22:23:32 GMT -5
Good work Apoplast, I bet your Drosera seedlings wont mind helping you out with them!
|
|
|
Post by frederick on Mar 7, 2013 8:49:46 GMT -5
I breed springtails to feed very small tarantulas As what has been said, cocopeat works quite well for substrate but if you want to breed in higher density (limited space/volume), you can add chunks of charcoal (activated charcoal is best) and also chunks of coco husk (higher surface area than cocopeat). A mix of the three is very good. The charcoal will be adsorbing hormones which serve as chemical cues to limit population density in very crowded cultures, so they can still reproduce in numbers given food is available! for food, baker's yeast and some fish flakes in small quantity here and there seems to make them thrive, just keep an eye on mould on the residual food. keep the culture at room temperature, make only a small aeration hole on top of the container and keep moist that's all I can say from experience, good luck!
|
|
|
Post by dvg on Mar 7, 2013 17:27:24 GMT -5
Thanks for the info Frederick. My cultures have mostly been comprised of potting soil mixed with either pine bark chips or cedar bark. I don't recommend the cedar bark, because it seemed to inhibit the springtail growth - there's a reason cedar chests are made out of cedar. Going to try some bigger containers with the cocopeat and some charred wood and see how my cultures do in those. dvg
|
|
|
Post by Apoplast on Mar 8, 2013 9:22:16 GMT -5
Hi Frederick - Thanks for the tips! I've got some high quality barbeque charcoal (not briquettes, actual untreated hardwood charcoal). I'll try breaking up some of that and setting up another jar. I'd already been feeding them baker's yeast, which they seem to love! I haven't punched any holes in the pint canning jars I am using. I just open the jars up about once a week, feed them, and spritz them with a little DI water. That seems to meet their air exchange needs so far. But hopefully I can increase the density of the population.
|
|