CUBE Nerul, Navi Mumbai Home Lab
Plan of Work and the design of the experiment
Now that I have concluded by the experiment performed yesterday that the Yeast granules which I had used earlier was not able to sustain Moinas, the newer Yeast granules showed bubbles when suspended in warm water and sugar which showed that sugar was broken down. So, I will be using the 1-month old Yeast granules for feeding the Moinas in my new setup.
Objective: To maintain a culture of the Moinas by feeding them with Yeast instead of its traditional feed Milk.
Design of the experiment:
I will be using Moinas, 8 - ~200mL plastic cups, 2L of Dechlorinated water, Live Yeast (Baker’s Yeast in the form of inactive Yeast granules), Milk, and droppers/pasteur pipettes.
The 8 cups will be divided into 4-control and 4-test.
All will be having 200mL of Dechlorinated Water + ~10 Moinas in them.
The control, further would be divided into two and two;
The first two (replicates of each other) would consist of 200mL of Dechlorinated Water + ~10 Moinas and nothing will be fed to them externally.
Why?
As per my observation in the previous Moina-Yeast experiment, the Moinas died after 3 days. Despite feeding them with Yeast granules (which now I came to know that were not viable😬) suspended in the water twice. So, I suspect that the Moinas were just alive on bacteria which were there in the Dechlorinated Water.
I am starving them to death (serious crime 
) so that I will come to know, how many days will they survive just on the bacteria present in the Dechlorinated Water and also some nutrients which came along with the Moinas in water in the form of water from the earlier culture medium from where they will be taken from (although it is a minute variable, it needs to be looked upon!).
The other two Control cups (these too, replicates of each other) would be having 200mL of Dechlorinated Water + ~10 Moinas + 1 drop of milk daily.
Why Milk suddenly?*
Milk is being used as my control as I know that the crustaceans will definitely survive when I am feeding them with Bacteria.
Milk = Carbohydrates (Lactose) + Proteins (Casein) + Vitamins + Minerals + Fats + bacteria.
DC Water = Bacteria + some dissolved minerals and nutrients.
The bacteria in both the cases will feed on the nutrients present in the milk (and will replicate) which then would be consumed by Moinas.
The 4 Test Cups would all be the same; having 200mL of DC Water + ~10 Moinas + 2 Yeast Granules suspended in 2mL of warm water (to hydrate, activate the dry yeast) and then adding it in the bottles on alternate days.
Note: The proportion of yeast is as per suggested by Abhijith Vinod and Akshitha from CUBE Kolenchery, Kerala as they have been culturing Moinas using Yeast since August 2019. So, 4 granules to be suspended in 500mL of Dechlorinated Water was suggested. Here, as I am using 200mL of Water, the number of granules are now halved.
Expectations:
Control 1 (starving): Moinas in both the cups should survive till 3 days (just an assumption which will be confirmed).
Control 2 (Milk): Moinas shall survive and will reproduce in both the cups.
Test (Yeast): Here too, they should survive and reproduce in all the cups.
Note: Plastic cups are being used because I don’t have enough plastic bottles.
Photos and Videos will be shared after the set-up is prepared!
Please contribute by improvising this design!