Do you think I can culture phyto in freshwater? I want to culture something I can feed to both My fresh water and SW tanks. I also don't want baby brine shrimp because I have to keep buying more of it
i believe chlorella is freshwater but there might be others as well, some phyto is brackish, some marine, some fresh, some can survive in a wide range of salinity... though the phyto that you choose to brew will most likely depend on the type of pods you want to culture. but i was under the impression that you wanted to feed pods to your tanks, not the phyto.
as for the brine shrimp, you can get a TON of eggs very cheap, the issue for me with brine is the egg capsules but ive never tried decapsulated eggs, you can also sieve out the nauplii from the egg shells but brine isnt worth the extra work imo.
i also dont think brine (or most pods) will live in fw very long, but its just food so that might be ok for your application. im not sure how long other species of pods will survive in fw either, but again, if they are just getting eaten, it shouldnt be a problem. i might be concerned about adding salty phyto to your fw system but sieving the pods out and not adding phyto to the fw could be a good solution.
I think i would culture some nannochloropsis or tetraselmis to start out with. larger starter cultures are easier/faster than if you start with a 5ml sample of the algae and have to turn 5ml to 2000ml of the same density. if you start with a very small starter sample, dont dilute the phyto too much (ive heard 1:1 or 5:4 but its just speculation(you just dont want a bacterial bloom that wipes it out)), you still want to be able to tell the color when diluted in the culture media (clean water and fertz to grow in)
i dont know to say how much you should culture, so you can scale up or down as needed.
get a 2000ml Erlenmeyer flask and a 2 hole bung (3+ if you want to automate phyto dosing) , delivery tubes/ airline hose and set it up under some 12/12 lights. fill up about half with the clean salt water (i dont recommend using old tank water, but it might work for you)
get some f/2 fertz and add a few drops in (i also add a drop of trace elements)
attach an air pump ( run air through a low micron air filter or carbon if you choose, also, instead of pushing with an air pump, you could use your skimmer to pull air thru the phyto too. ) and run air tubes thru the bung down to the bottom of the flask. use a regulator to slow the air to a few bubbles of movement, dont use an air stone and too much air flow as to not skim the phyto. but you also dont want it to settle on the bottom because it will suffocate. add 500ml tetraselmis. its not recommended to mix species as one will mostly like take over if any do survive.
the second hole doesnt need the hoses as its the exhaust, but you can reuse the air and help with contamination. you could add more delivery tubes to the bottom and have a doser auto feed live phyto to the tank or the pod culture, you could then top it off with new water after
leave the phyto bubble for a few weeks, you could get a density measuring stick but its not necessary. hard to say when it will be done, but if its smells like ammonia or the color turns yellow/brown it has crashed so properly dispose of it and start again. you can use it whenever you want, but when it reaches its max density it should be diluted/used/ preserved... ive heard people letting them brew 10 days between, others for a few weeks so youll have to find what works for you. if it gets foamy after a few weeks, id say its close to max. careful that you dont cross contaminate anything. keep track of how long and what you do, so that if it crashes, you know why and how to prevent next time.
if it all goes good, get more flasks and algae samples (check valves can help with cross contamination while using the same air pump for all the cultures) the mix i like to make consists of tetra, nanno, iso and porphy.
once you have a stable supply of phyto, set up another flask filled with a single species of pods and add some phyto from the first culture as needed. sieve out the pods to feed fry
i would keep the pod culture separate from the phyto culture and have 1 of each incase anything goes wrong you arent at square 1, but it may work just as well for you if you merge them together, just lower the density of the phyto and dump the pods in and let them brew together.
