Growing Phytoplankton

[dz6t]

To sanitize the container, I use hydrogen peroxide from Dollar Tree and Market Basket, $1 bottle can last for a while.

 

[JBendel]

I recently went on a backpack trip and brought a Steripen along to kill giardia ... it is basically a portable UV light. I now use it on the saltwater for phytoplankton splits (vs. boiling the water). Despite the name, it does not sterilize the water, so it is not as good as boiling, but is a lot quicker.... so far, have not had any issues, ... I double the recommended contact time and make sure to continuously agitate the water.

Drinking water treatment with ultraviolet light for travelers – Evaluation of a mobile lightweight system

The SteriPEN® is a handheld device for disinfecting water with ultraviolet (UV) radiation. The manufacturer claims a reduction of at least 99.9% of ba…

www.sciencedirect.com

.

 

[FishieBusiness]

Ok I'm in. What is a good size culture to start for a 130gal system?

Started collecting collecting materials.

Airpump check
flex tubing. check
light check
Culture from a BRS member

Rigid tubing on order
air filters on order
metering air valve on order

Is there anything else that you would recommend?

 

[coralfishreef]

F2 fertilizer and clean bottles that can stored in a fridge. I saved the 16 oz bottles from Algae barn that had the measurement built in.

Algae barn directions.

According to Algae barn the starting dosage for 130 gal is 32.5 mL a day. 3 Liters would last 3 months if the phyto stayed alive that long. My experience with the Algae barn phyto is that the Oceanmagik started turning clear and settling in the bottle after 4 weeks even with daily shaking.

I’m going to try splitting again in 4 weeks or sooner if the phyto in the fridge starts turning clear before then.

 

[PSU4ME]

You think ocean magic is a good starter culture?

 

[coralfishreef]

I started with a bottle of phyto from Dong who used Oceanmagik as his starter culture according to his previous post.

My phyto under a microscope appears to only have 1 or 2 species of phytoplankton instead of the 4 in Oceanmagik. This makes me wonder if 4 species can actually be cultured together. In a couple months I’ll probably buy a bottle of Oceanmagik to 1) look at the phyto species under the microscope and 2) see if I can grow all 4 species from a fresh bottle of Oceanmagik.

Also, for the next batch I’m going to use saltwater with lower salinity. The different species have different salinity requirements. For this batch I used saltwater @1.026 SG instead of the recommended 1.014 - 1.017. I may have shock killed off the other species because of the higher salinity. This time I just wanted to see if I could grow phyto without going too crazy. Next time I’ll follow more of the recommendations from this Reefs.com article.

The Breeder’s Net: Culturing Larval Fish Foods, Part I

We'll survey useful types of phytoplankton, discuss why they are important in our home fish breeding efforts, and examine what it takes for home culture of these microalgae.

reefs.com

 

[coralfishreef]

You think ocean magic is a good starter culture?

The reefs.com article and Reefs.com both used starter culture from Florida Aqua Farms.

I bought a 16 oz bottle of phyto from Dong just to give growing phyto a try - local and inexpensive ($5). I don’t have any plans on breeding fish.

Culture your own Phytoplankton | Melev's Reef

www.melevsreef.com

Microalgae Disks – Florida Aqua Farms

 

[FishieBusiness]

I have a few questions if you please.

1. What type of light do you use? Some say any cheap light will work. Others say use a 6500K. Can't seem to find a recommended wattage either?? Do have the timing down @ 16hrs/day.

2.Also what size container and how many should I use?? I dont what to over produce for what I can handle.

3.When to actually split Will the culture crash if left till 2 weeks?? 1 vid the guy only split every 2 and another split every 5-7 days

 

[dz6t]

My own experience is to keep it simple.
First of all, I don’t think there are significant nutrition difference between different species of phytoplankton, at least not in the grand scale or even measurable or noticeable.

Over time, if the said starter culture indeed has multiple species of phytoplankton, (but I can assure you they were not in equal proportions in the bottle), after multiple splitting, you will down to 1 or 2 species.

But that does not affect the effectiveness of live Phytoplankton.

 

[dz6t]

2nd is clean bottles, I sanitize them with hydrogen peroxide.

3rd is to use a good F2 fertilizer, I bought mine on Amazon. Some brand is better than others.
I use Mercer of Montana which yield more stable cultures.

4th is lighting, I use a 4 bulb t5 which gives the even and strong light, bulb combination is ATI coral plus, Purple plus, Geismann tropic and a no name horticulture bulb. All are pretty white in color.

 

[coralfishreef]

I used a spare light that I was originally using to help differentiate between colors with tank test kits. The light has a 13 watt “full spectrum, daylight” bulb.

I used 3L bottles because I had them and they were clean. I’ve seen people use 2L bottles, 1 L beakers, water pitchers, etc...

The bottles I used aren’t recommended because it’s preferable for the bottom of the bottle to be round to help keep the phyto from settling on the bottom. I was swirling the liquid once or twice a day to help keep the phyto in suspension.

As an experiment, and out of courtesy to the other half, I left two sealed bottles of phyto on the counter, still being lit, and both bottles are starting to turn clear and are staying clear; the phyto is settled on the bottom. My guess is that the phyto hit maturity and is starting to die without co2.

I put three 16 oz bottle of phyto in the fridge and the liquid is green in all three without being shaken. Phyto is supposed to stay alive for a month in the fridge. You should be able to split the refrigerated phyto in a couple of weeks - at least that’s my hope.

 

[dz6t]

There should be no problem to culture phytoplankton that stays in the frige for a month. I did it and it was as good.

 

[JPags]

So I have been growing my culture for a few weeks now and I noticed that after splitting a few times I was getting some crud on the bottom of the bottles. I started filtering the phyto through just a piece of paper towel when splitting so I sm only getting phyto in the split. My cultures seem to be doing much better with this process and the crud on the bottom is gone.

I have also been sterilizing in my microwave. I use glass bottles so I fill 1/2 way with the new water and fertilizer and then put in the microwave for 6min on 60%.

Seems to be working nice. My cultures are getting nice and dark and seem to be growing pretty fast.

 

[FishieBusiness]

So I have been growing my culture for a few weeks now and I noticed that after splitting a few times I was getting some crud on the bottom of the bottles. I started filtering the phyto through just a piece of paper towel when splitting so I sm only getting phyto in the split. My cultures seem to be doing much better with this process and the crud on the bottom is gone.

I have also been sterilizing in my microwave. I use glass bottles so I fill 1/2 way with the new water and fertilizer and then put in the microwave for 6min on 60%.

Seems to be working nice. My cultures are getting nice and dark and seem to be growing pretty fast.

You strerilize after adding wtr & fert. ?? Does that not damage the fertilizer? Also do you need to sterilize RO wtr?? Where did you get the glass bottles??

Have all things I need to start my on culture. I'm looking forward to the project.

thanks for your input

 

[JPags]

No as long as you don't boil it, the fertalizer is not affected I did a bunch of research online and looked at different methods this seemed the simplest. The reason I do it that way is you need to have water in the glass or plastic to sterilize it in the microwave anyway. I also use salt water from my salt water mixing station (Diluted to get it to the right salinity) so I sterilize it to make sure nothing is in it since I don't mix RO and salt just for this. I did 2 cultures at first and crashed both. Once I started this process I have had no issues.

 

[coralfishreef]

I did 2 cultures at first and crashed both. Once I started this process I have had no issues.

I had to toss 2 culture attempts from what looked like bacteria contamination. I’ll be sterilizing the bottle and tubing for the upcoming batch.

 

[JPags]

The bottles I used aren’t recommended because it’s preferable for the bottom of the bottle to be round to help keep the phyto from settling on the bottom. I was swirling the liquid once or twice a day to help keep the phyto in suspension.

One other note, I had a lot of sediment on the bottom at first and had to shake the bottles regularly. What I do now is take the sterilized bottle 1/2 full of water and fertilizer and pour in the top 1/2 of the current culture (Running it through a paper towel in a funnel, and then take the bottom 1/2 and pour that in the bottle I put in the fridge. Since I have been doing this my cultures are getting nice and dark green with out a lot of sediment and I don't have to shake the bottles every day like I was.

 

[coralfishreef]

New batch - Day 1

Rinsed a new 3L jug with hot water and vinegar. Also rinsed a new tubing line with hot water and vinegar. The phyto from the fridge had a little bit of dead white phyto in it. We’ll see what happens in a few days.

 

[JPags]

That looks pretty light, are you ding a 1-1 mix of phyto to new water?

 

[coralfishreef]

That looks pretty light, are you ding a 1-1 mix of phyto to new water?

Not 1-1. That is 300 mL added to 2 L. It is very light.