Questions: Starting Phyto Culture with DT's

[jthunder]

I have been reading a lot about the benifits and methods of culturing phytoplankton for feeding to my aquarium. I have a couple of questions.

1. I would like to use a 5 gallon clear plastic water jug used for drinking coolers to raise the phyto. Are my chances of successfully culturing be lower or higher with this container?

2. I bought some DT's Live Phytoplankton from the LFS to start the cultures, but unfortunately they don't carry any of the micro-algae fertilizer that most people use in their cultures. Is there a substitute that I can use that will work just as effectively (such as lawn or generic house plant fertilizer)?

3. I was planning on using some airtubing to dose green water from the container to the sump, and also just topping up the culture container with 1.20 SG water when it needed it and keep the culture growing. Is this pretty standard practice?

Thanks for the help, I know many of you are expert phyto farmers! Please give any suggestions you might that would help me out. This is for feeding an 80 gallon system with fuge.

JT

[jthunder]

Additional fertilizer question:

Can I use, some flake food or other food/ammonia source to feed the phyto?

[sjvl51]

I'll try to answer you questions. I use the Plankton Culture Manual for most of my data.

1. p 28 "Algae densities are usually lower in larger culture vessels, but what is mort important is the number of alga cells per unit volume. ... Based on the fact that smaller vessels are easier to control, it is usually better to use five 100-liter culture vessels rather than one 500-liter vessel." Another point, if you are using multiple containers and one crashes, you still have other batches to fall back on.

2. DT's used to be used to start plankton when it was comprised of a single type of plankton. Now it is a mixture of various planktons (3, I think) so you cannot use it to start your plankton. What will happen is the 3 planktons will try to outcompete each other for the food and the culture has a greater tentency to crash. No you cannot use household fertilizer. Most/all contain dye as well as other chemicals that you don't want in your tank and that could/would kill the plankton. The Macro Grow is fairly cheap ($15 for 8 oz container from http://www.reefcrew.com/) and you only use 1 ml/2 liters of water so it lasts quite a while. Here is what the manual says about this (p 31) "Good growth of a microalgae culture is dependent on a proper balance between specific major and minor nutrients. Imbalances in these nutrients usually lead rapidly to cessation of culture growth. Exhaustion of nutrients is one of the most important factors limiting growth and controlling nutritional quality in mass cultures. Many fertilizers contain inadequate amounts of nitrogen or unstable metals, especially iron, which can lead to retarded microalgae growth. In alkaline solutions, iron and other metals often precipitate over time. Clelating agents such as EDTA are used to maintain metals in solution, making them available to microalgae."

3. Most people don't do this because you want the microalgae to use up all the nutrients (phosphate, nitrogen, etc) before you add the plankton to the tank otherwise you will be feeding the algae in your tank that you don't want to grow. I tried basically the same thing - I would use half a bottle of plankton and top up with water and Macro Algae. After about 4 or 5 times, the culture crashed due to the buildup on the inside of the bottle (prevented light from getting in) and the decomposing of the dead cells in the bottom of the bottle.

4. - Additional fertilizer question - No, as flake food doesn't have the nutrients that the plankton need to grow.

Have you checked Flame Angel's web site? http://www.sjwilson.net/reef/ She has excellent instructions on growing plankton with plenty of pictures.

How important is the correct temperature? I had a few batches crash because the temp went too high. Now I have my culture station in a water bath to keep the temp where it belongs. My culture station is in a window sill so you can imagine the temperature swings - right now too low which is why I use a water bath.

How important is lighting? Very. As Dec came with shorter days and less sunlight, I found the plankton growth almost stopped until I added a double 36 inch fixture to my system. I was using a single 24 inch fixture with the daylight.

Susan feeds her tank a lot less plankton than I do. My goal is to have 2 liters of NAN and 2 liters of TET plankton available daily. Part of the NAN (about 1 liter) and part of the TET (about 1 cup)go to feed my rotifer culture. The remainder I drip feed to my 90 gallon tank to feed my flame scallop and the pods for my mandarin. I am still fine tuning the amounts so that my scallop looks happy and the algae doesn't grow too fast. Even with the refuge, the algae will grow because of the nutrients in the plankton.

Remember, as you add plankton, you are also adding salt water. Check your salinity frequently. I have gotten into the habit of trying to remove an amount of salt water equal to the amount that I am adding in the plankton (if I add 1 gallon of plankton, then I remove 1 gallon of salt water). Call it painless water changes - just daily.

Vickie

[jthunder]

Thanks for the informative reply... very appreciated!

This answers the questions I had about the phyto cultures. I think what I will do is start the cultures in smaller containers and more of them so that I can have a regular supply of the phyto. I will also try two different types of phyto instead of trying to use DT's. Maybe the LFS has some culture that I can 'borrow' to start mine.

Thanks again...

JT

[sjvl51]

You can buy some plankton fairly cheap from Reef Crew. I have found them very helpful and the plankton that I received was always very dark green. There is a measuring stick available that I use daily to ensure the plankton is growing. When I received an order of NAN from Reef Crew, the reading was 2 on the measuring stick. My cultures were normally between 3 and 4.

FWIW I found that TET was easier to culture than NAN. It seemed to be less likely to crash due to temp or over fertilizing.

I grow my cultures in 5 one gallon jugs for each plankton. This allows me a 5 day grow cycle. When I split a gallon (after it grows for 5 days), 1 put half in a clean gallon to grow a new batch and half in a pop bottle for feeding to the tank or rotifers.

Since I am using a shorter growing cycle than Flame Angel, I use 0.8 ml of Macro Grow for each 2 liters of new salt water. If you split before the cultures are full grown, the Macro Grow will build up and cause a crash. I am finding out (the hard way) that it is very easy to cause a crash by not carefully following the instructions.

Here is a forum where Reef Crew answers questions about plankton growing http://www.aquariumpros.ca/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=80

If I can help, just PM me as I don't always check the threads that I posted in.

Vickie