Orange stuff in some of my peats.

[erikthur]

In some of my peats orange stuff appears after some weeks.
When looking thru a strong lens they look like cysts and are about 0.1 mm large.
I guess it is not a good sign but does anybody know what it means?
Some kind of fungus???
Will they effect the eggs???

Thanks in advance / Erik

[shortman]

I guess it is not a good sign but does anybody know what it means?
Some kind of fungus???
Will they effect the eggs???

My experience the other time was that my peat start to have white egg and I do not take chance, immediately dump the whole peat moss.

The peat moss was microwave for 15 minutes, I guess is my mistake that I left it un-cover for too long.

Now, I make sure that there is water level on top of the peat moss and well cover. To prevent fry from laying their eggs on the peat moss.

[whuntley]

They probably are cysts or shells of cysts -- of brine shrimp. My peat often has a lot of little spherical things about 0.1 mm diameter and they are just Artemia shells. They can get lighter color as the peat ages and dries. They cause no harm, at least if they are just the hatched shells.

Wright

[TyroneGenade]

When I see BS cysts in the peat I start to have queezy feelings... Were the fish so young and small they were still being fed bbs? Can't be many eggs... All those BS cysts... the fish must of pooped a lot in the peat. It must be full of nasty organic waste. Can't imagine very many eggs surviving...

At least this is how my paranoid mind works.

[erikthur]

Yes they look much like decapsulated brine shrimp cysts.
But I have a hard time imagine them being just that.
But the whitei in question most probably ate live food from a nearby pond at that time and their eggs were laid in bottom mops and later transferred to peat. But some water of course comes along with the eggs.
If it is cysts it have to be cysts from from the Swedish nature that were not visible at the start. Decapsulated by the peat???

[erikthur]

Would it not be nice to hatch fry food together with your killie fry?
But no such good luck...
However, I got a good hatch today of Pterolebias longipinnis from the first peat I tried hatching containing the orange stuff.
I know firmly believe the orange stuff decapsulated eggs of some native species.
I remember a lot of very small floating black rounded things around at that time when I fed with live pond food (resting eggs of daphnia or something similar???)

[whuntley]

Would it not be nice to hatch fry food together with your killie fry?

That's pretty easy with Daphnia. The babies may eat some green water, but the Daphnia will scarf it up and turn it into tiny baby Daphnia that many killy babies can eat.

Thanks to Kho's generosity, I can now use that method.

Wright