Auto dosing phyto

[benmed]

I’m considering setting up auto dosing for phyto and I’m looking for advice from those who have successfully implemented one, kind of similar to:

How to automate a phytoplankton culture

Giving that we love tech and use any excuse to reduce labour in our tanks I will give you below the diagram to automate a phytoplankton culture. There’s no need to split cultures weekly, just set it up and forget it. It’s really simple and it worked for me for two consecutive years without...

www.reef2reef.com

one Of my concerns is the viability of the phyto in the tubing as it exits the reactor, goes through the doser and empties into the tank. How long will the phyto remain viable while in the outflow tubing. My plan is to dose about 1 mL per hour for my 120 gallon system. Depending on the length and volume of the tubing, that may mean that the phyto will be in the tubing for 24 hours or more at room temperature. Will they survive or will I just be filling my tank with dead phyto?

Obviously, trying to make that tubing as short as possible is ideal but there are limits to what I can do

 

[Rtaylor]

It will be fine. Most people culture at least at room temperature, keeping it warmer (78-85ish F) will encourage faster growth. Culturing in a refrigerator is what wouldn’t work well.

 

[Gtinnel]

I am considering making something to auto dose phyto also, and my thought was it gets shipped for several days at higher than refrigerated temps and doesn’t hurt anything.

Also, somewhere on the forum I have seen a thread where someone used a dosing pump that could also run backwards, and they would run it backwards to clear the line. It would use the dosing pump to bubble the phyto to stir it occasionally, so they didn’t need to use a magnetic stirrer.

 

[AlgaeDepot]

Dosing Live Phyto is something we definitely do here but just ensure the lines aren’t too long where phytoplankton could sit for too long. You really won’t have any issues and the cells should remain viable since they are cultured at room temp ranges. Just be sure to purge the lines once in a while to prevent buildup.

 

[biophilia]

1mL per hour, even at really high culture densities, diluted into 120 gallons is such a small amount that you will likely see zero difference between dosing and not dosing if your goal is to feed copepods or other suspension feeding inverts. The phyto will die in the lines if it’s sitting in them for as long as you are estimating (24 hours), but even then it will have a negligible impact on water quality given that small or a dose. You’re probably better off manually dumping in a larger amount (say 200-500ml) once or twice per day or auto-dosing a shelf stable dead phyto product like Easybooster.

 

[MBruun]

I was auto dosing 750ml/day (hourly) to my 180G system.
The phyto can easy survive in a tube for an hour.

 

[MartinM]

Why not dose a concentrated solution like something from brightwell? That’s what I’ve switched to doing and I have swarms of plankton, pods, plenty of stuff I don’t know the identity of!

 

[adamg77]

Why not dose a concentrated solution like something from brightwell? That’s what I’ve switched to doing and I have swarms of plankton, pods, plenty of stuff I don’t know the identity of!

Just checked into this stuff and I may try this as culturing phyto is just another step