Why does my Phyto keep getting tinted brown?

CaptainNegatory · Jul 2, 2018

Just a quick question that is kinda making me panic. It seems after I split my phyto it turns brown. I'm not sure why and this happened with the OceanMagik bottles after they were split too. This is just a pure Nano bottle. The two far bottles look green from the photo but you can see the brown Tint in the closest one. Maybe from just splitting and topping off the water? That bottle is labeled number one so it was the original culture. Nothing else has come in this bottle. Maybe the plastic is am issue and the glass jars would be better but again I seriously doubt it. Would appreciate any info.

Larry L · Jul 2, 2018

I saw in your previous post that you mentioned something about using antibacterial soap for cleaning? I wonder if there is residue that is killing some of the phyto. I would just use a dilute bleach solution and rinse/dry thoroughly.

CaptainNegatory · Jul 3, 2018

Larry L said:
I saw in your previous post that you mentioned something about using antibacterial soap for cleaning? I wonder if there is residue that is killing some of the phyto. I would just use a dilute bleach solution and rinse/dry thoroughly.

Possible, however the original bottle was washed the same way. I will be using the glass pickle jars soon which will be much cleaner and thoroughly rinsed. I'm leaving it on the bubbles and we will see what happens. Hopefully two bottles turn out well. I am due to have 8 bottles of copepods this week that will need feeding.

Everything is constant only that the second splits are going brown. I'm very confused.

Erica-Renee · Jul 3, 2018

When i was doing that i had trouble with plastic soft drink 2 liter bottles.. I switched to Rum bottles , Washed them out completely with Vinegar and water solution then Ro water Never used any detergent .... Thou not sure why second culture would do this unless maybe its old spores dying off.. ??

CaptainNegatory · Jul 3, 2018

Maybe I can try switching to pickle jars sooner than later. I need to find a few culture disks now though as Amazon says they are unavailable. Now I'm seeing this stuff. Is this hair algae? I've got no idea what's going on. To split the culture I simply poured 1/3 in one bottle, 1/3 in another bottle, filled all thee back up with new RODI salt water.

CaptainNegatory · Jul 3, 2018

Some of that same stuff was used for pods and they are doing just fine.I'm so perplexed.

sbash · Jul 5, 2018

CaptainNegatory said:
Maybe I can try switching to pickle jars sooner than later. I need to find a few culture disks now though as Amazon says they are unavailable. Now I'm seeing this stuff. Is this hair algae? I've got no idea what's going on. To split the culture I simply poured 1/3 in one bottle, 1/3 in another bottle, filled all thee back up with new RODI salt water.

I had the same problem. I used plastic bottles from distilled water (I didn't wash the bottles). I had one successful culture split, then the same thing happened to me. The phyto started to build up on the plastic and the water column died off. I was feeding with a non-copper miracle grow. It was supposed to be a low maintenance project, and I didn't have the time to troubleshoot so I just abandoned it. That phyto gunk though seems to be good food for my brine shrimp tank.

CaptainNegatory · Jul 5, 2018

sbash said:
I had the same problem. I used plastic bottles from distilled water (I didn't wash the bottles). I had one successful culture split, then the same thing happened to me. The phyto started to build up on the plastic and the water column died off. I was feeding with a non-copper miracle grow. It was supposed to be a low maintenance project, and I didn't have the time to troubleshoot so I just abandoned it. That phyto gunk though seems to be good food for my brine shrimp tank.

I am going to try again with my new sterilization method and see what happens. Also with micro air filters on each line.