First week of modifed feeding

This week I began feeding one of my experimental fish Lacto bacillus Casei Shirota. I'm starting with fish food flakes by coating them with growth from a MRS agar plate. I also tried coating them with TSB, but the flakes wilted quickly on contact with liquid.

I wanted to suspend the bacteria within a gel, so I cooked up some gelatin and embedded some bacteria within and on top; neither survived to the next day. Sure, they wouldn't grow on the gelatin, but I figured they'd last a bit longer. Maybe I could add some sugar to the mix. Embedding them in the gel might help deliver them into the fish effectively without loss into the water. If that doesn't work I'll try coating floating pellets which might absorb inoculated TSB.

I transferred the two control fish (I got an extra for free) into a smaller tank that has a similar environment to the other two tanks. I was advised this would be better than keeping them in the large tank. I wish I could keep them all in larger tanks so they could feel more comfortable and live longer, but I don't have that option at the moment.

The two control fish are in the leftmost tank. The large tank in the bank is out of commission. Surprisingly, it was pretty clean without a filter.

Fish food for preserving fish for food.

My star experimental fish 'Beck' died over spring break. Beck was going to be the fish that received the L. bacillus and fructooligosaccharide FOS. I noticed that the fish named 'Stache' is relatively fast and aggressive when feeding. Maybe Beck starved because of Stache. This won't matter because Beck's successor "Snowball II" will go to a separate tank. At the moment I'll be performing the experiment as follows:

Main tank:
Fish1 - Control - standard fish food
Fish2 - Stache - standard fish food


Surplus fish go here.

Secondary tank: with water and rock from main tank.
Fish3 - ET - standard fish food and L. Bacillus

Tertiary tank: with water and rock from main tank.
Snowball II - standard fish food plus enriched food with L. Bacillus and FOS.
Probably Lactobacillus casei shirota because that grew the best in my MRS plates.

I might use 'Stache' to test larger amounts of FOS if I can get another bowl/tank.
Or, I might try a different species of Lactobacillus.

All of the fish will be receiving the standard fish food. However, ET and Snowball II will be fed additional gelatin confections. I am making these by mixing gelatin with FOS and Lactobacillus and letting it cool. It can be cut into small pieces as needed. I need to keep the water in the mixture warm, but not too warm; I don't want to kill off the probiotics.

Floating fish food flakes

Many of you've probably noticed that the fish tank was partitioned into 3 areas using plastic trays. I drilled holes in them thinking this would promote circulation of O2 and keep the composition homogenous. There were a few problems. I had the bubbler in the middle on the bottom hoping it would diffuse. But, of course it just mostly went up and out like it should. This led to hypoxia in the side areas and very 'depressed' fish. Also, when the bubbler was in the middle, it would push the floating fish food flakes out to the two sides too quickly so the fish in the middle couldn't get a chance to eat. I'm letting them live together until I put them in 3 separate beakers Josh got me. That'll solve the problem. It may lead to slightly different environments - pH, ammonia etc. It should however, help isolate types of bacterial growth, so any introduced lactobacillus does not spread between fish unintentionally.

I made my MRS agar plates (encourages growth of lactobacillus while suppressing other types). It is clearly much better after one day compared with my previous lactobacillus growth on TSA which took a few days with the same species. I also tested the fish tank water in TSB and got a surprising amount of growth. Moreso than I remember getting with Encanto park water.

As for the floating fish food flakes - I need to get some floating pellets instead. I need something that I can inoculate and enrich easier (and also which floats).