DIY Phytoplankton Culture

eleet

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I dose the tank with both. I have a thing for fish that have extremely high metabolisms. Mandarins, wrasses, anthias. They need to eat really frequently. Pods help.
 
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ReefNerd76

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I dose the tank with both. I have a thing for fish that have extremely high metabolisms. Mandarins, wrasses, anthias. They need to eat really frequently. Pods help.
I just need to get a good starter culture of pods and then I'll make more in my lab
 

hollback

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How much you have ready to sell? My Cheato Algae needs a good cleaning

Sorry, I just sold them all. It will be a little while as they take a while to reach adulthood and become dense.

I've been culturing nannochloropsis in 2ltr bottles for just as long. I rarely add the nanno to my tank. It's to grow the copepods. I do however, feed pods to my tank every other day.
 

djd3mon

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Filtered out my 3 pod cultures and put them in their new vessel.
Added TIsbe pods to the other vessel.
Picking up 3 more vessels for phyto, brine shrimp and mysis.
The wait is on.

The green tint is wat darker than it looks in person...still lighter than my last pod culture

15317796_10154161686789071_5104951421219528753_n.jpg
 
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ReefNerd76

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Filtered out my 3 pod cultures and put them in their new vessel.
Added TIsbe pods to the other vessel.
Picking up 3 more vessels for phyto, brine shrimp and mysis.
The wait is on.

The green tint is wat darker than it looks in person...still lighter than my last pod culture

15317796_10154161686789071_5104951421219528753_n.jpg
Looking awesome
 

Tbabcock

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Where did you get them containers? I would love to have some for my rotifers as well as making my own phyto.. im spending a bundle on RG complete to feed these things.
 

hollback

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Looks good! Be very careful with cross contamination. It can easily ruin your cultures. Rotifers are the worst. The tiniest little drop of them in my copepod cultures will out-compete and crash my pods in less than a week. I'm constantly sterilizing my copepod equipment (hoses, buckets, sieves gloves...) with muriatic acid.
 

djd3mon

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Nice and thanks for the link.. how did you run the air line?

I cut a piece of rigid airline tubing and put it in the vessel. then used microwaved watwr to soften regular airline tubing. slipped the sirloin tubing over the rigod tubing. I am running each vessel on one tetra quiet air pump with a backflow preventer and 2 adjustable air valves to get a very precise air flow.
 

Wh00pS32

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"Looks good! Be very careful with cross contamination. It can easily ruin your cultures. Rotifers are the worst. The tiniest little drop of them in my copepod cultures will out-compete and crash my pods in less than a week. I'm constantly sterilizing my copepod equipment (hoses, buckets, sieves gloves...) with muriatic acid."

I find exactly the opposite, i find culturing my pods together with rotifers gives better results for myself. The culture has been going for almost 2 years and works great.
I got the tip for doing the two together from a guy who cultures pods commercially.
 

hollback

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I find exactly the opposite, i find culturing my pods together with rotifers gives better results for myself. The culture has been going for almost 2 years and works great.
I got the tip for doing the two together from a guy who cultures pods commercially.

That's funny. You never know what will work for someone and not someone else.

I know the Columbus zoo if very careful about cross contamination for there large fish breeding feed cultures. It happens occasionally and production decreases.

I would think you'd have to thin the rotifers since once a rotifer culture gets dense it will make a dark green culture tank completely clear in less than 24 hrs. I assume the adult copepods could be feeding on the rotifers and keeping the population in check.
 
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ReefNerd76

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When I want to start the cultivation do I need to get the dish full of the phyto or can I just grab some phytoplankton from the store and cultivate from that?
You can do it either way
 

CastAway

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Not all store bought phyto's are live. "Phyto-Feast" for example, by Reef Nutrition cannot be used to start a culture. Most store bought phyto's are blends I think.
 
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ReefNerd76

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Not all store bought phyto's are live. "Phyto-Feast" for example, by Reef Nutrition cannot be used to start a culture. Most store bought phyto's are blends I think.
You are correct, I had a long Friday and wasn't even thinking about that. I should of had some coffee before I answered him.
 
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