Cloudy Phyto culture

[chimbo84]

I decided to start culturing my own phytoplankton as buying it every other week from my LFS was starting to get expensive (two bottles at $10.50 a pop).
I got my culture vessel all set up and ran over to get my starter culture. It was a nice green color and seemed like a healthy culture.

However, as soon as I added it to the clean salt water in my culture vessel, it immediately turned cloudy white. This doesn’t seem right to me and I am wondering if this culture is dead.

I also added about 15mL to my tank and it made chunky cloudy trails in my tank as soon as it hit the water.

 

[chimbo84]

Is it me or is this spirulina (100x)? In any event, it doesn’t resemble any phytoplankton that is typically cultured for our tanks.

 

[chimbo84]

Bump.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

You added that white stuff to your tank?

it definately should not turn white when you add phyto to saltwater. Perhaps you can describe your process?

Is it live phyto, can you show a pic of the label? What kind of fertilizer? How much fert and how much phyto did you add to the saltwater? What salinity is thew new saltwater? Did you sterilize everything before?

 

[chimbo84]

You added that white stuff to your tank?

it definately should not turn white when you add phyto to saltwater. Perhaps you can describe your process?

Is it live phyto, can you show a pic of the label? What kind of fertilizer? How much fert and how much phyto did you add to the saltwater? What salinity is thew new saltwater? Did you sterilize everything before?

Thanks for the response. I bought two bottles of what my LFS sells as “live Phyto”. When I got home, I took one bottle and added about 10-15mL of it to my tank and noticed it was turning cloudy white when it hit the tank. I took the other bottle and added it to fresh saltwater to culture it and that is what happened. I still have the remainder of the first bottle in the fridge and when I looked at it under a microscope, it resembles spirulina and I noticed the liquid has little black specks floating in it. It definitely doesn’t seem like live Phyto and I’m wondering if my LFS ripped me off.

 

[TWYOUNG]

Definately not right at all. I can't imagine anything causing that type of sudden precipitation other than a chemical reaction, likely pH related. Perhaps the staff chemist Randy Holmes-Farley could comment?

 

[chimbo84]

Here is a video of me adding a few drops to my tank. It immediately precipitates into chunky white clouds.

 

[chimbo84]

@Randy Holmes-Farley any idea what might be happening?

 

[chimbo84]

First link didn’t work.