Phytoplankton Fuge?

[Jacked Reefer]

I can barely get a consistent culture outside the fuge ;Hilarious;Hilarious;Hilarious

Interested in what you come up with!

Getting a consistent and plentiful culture using solely nitrate/phosphate dosing and in a salinity we run our reef tanks with will be my first objective once I start tests (when have my tank fully functioning lol) Once I have the nitrate and phosphate numbers which lead the the healthiest yield I will move on to constantly supplying it to the tank.

I’ve got a couple of ideas that will be fun to try.

 

[hawkeye792001]

Personally, I'd just scoop some phyto into your tank daily, and tank water into your phyto and see how that goes.

If it works you could set up a dose, if it crashes, you just lost a culture.

 

[Jacked Reefer]

Personally, I'd just scoop some phyto into your tank daily, and tank water into your phyto and see how that goes.

If it works you could set up a dose, if it crashes, you just lost a culture.

Yeah that’s the conventional way. I want to find a way to lower matinence times and I have to much time so I want a challenge

 

[jzw]

we like this idea lols

will the buggers get smashed going thru the rollers on the dosing mechanism?

@Kayden Hutchings, keep at it!

 

[Jacked Reefer]

we like this idea lols

will the buggers get smashed going thru the rollers on the dosing mechanism?

@Kayden Hutchings, keep at it!

Thanks! I’ll try to actually make this work

Phytoplankton is very very small. It’s small enough that most mechanical things that we use would not kill it by squishing, hitting, or launching.

 

[KrisReef]

What boundaries?

Marine virus' vs. UV.

That was a generous offer. Whole discussion helps answer another question that came up here:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/what-is-more-important-in-this-hobby-knowledge-or-money.524066/

 

[sixty_reefer]

Kayden concept is actually spot on. I think the only thing it was missing was using a fresh batch of salt instead of using tank water. Here’s a prototype working for 7-8 months now. All done under 50$ material here in the uk also.

Continuous phytoplankton|rotifers reactor 24h food supply
https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?sh...reactor--24h-food-supply.526123/&share_type=t

 

[sde1500]

In theory this would be awesome. In practice it definitely is so much harder. Having run phyto cultures that just crashed out of no where when I was manually dosing and refilling with NSW, its tough. I couldn't imagine how hard it would be trying to run it continuous dosing in a tank and it not failing in time. I wouldn't trust a UV to stop all rotifers and pods etc that could get into the water. Dose one pod from your tank into the phyto and wave good bye to that culture. I think really the best means for auto dosing is to just have a sizeable container of phyto on autodose into the tank and just keep replacing that with a new culture every week. Grow the culture separately. containers need to be cleaned in time, I used 2l bottles and they are caked in green gunk on the sides. That buildup over time would block out light.

 

[sixty_reefer]

In theory this would be awesome. In practice it definitely is so much harder. Having run phyto cultures that just crashed out of no where when I was manually dosing and refilling with NSW, its tough. I couldn't imagine how hard it would be trying to run it continuous dosing in a tank and it not failing in time. I wouldn't trust a UV to stop all rotifers and pods etc that could get into the water. Dose one pod from your tank into the phyto and wave good bye to that culture. I think really the best means for auto dosing is to just have a sizeable container of phyto on autodose into the tank and just keep replacing that with a new culture every week. Grow the culture separately. containers need to be cleaned in time, I used 2l bottles and they are caked in green gunk on the sides. That buildup over time would block out light.

Add 20 beads of k1 micro to the culture, that keeps the inside of the container clean

 

[sde1500]

Add 20 beads of k1 micro to the culture, that keeps the inside of the container clean

Interesting, I assume you use it? So how's it work? Like cycling the culture, or just bounces around and keeping it mixed up off the sides? I'm looking to restart my cultures in 1 gallon glass brewing containers, so they would be easier to clean/sterilize, but this intrigues me now.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Interesting, I assume you use it? So how's it work? Like cycling the culture, or just bounces around and keeping it mixed up off the sides? I'm looking to restart my cultures in 1 gallon glass brewing containers, so they would be easier to clean/sterilize, but this intrigues me now.

Mainly for bouncing around and keeping the wall clean. The container shown in the pic not been clean is 7-8 months

 

[sde1500]

Mainly for bouncing around and keeping the wall clean. The container shown in the pic not been clean is 7-8 months

Good stuff, my containers were nasty after a few months.

 

[Wonderboy]

I have been brainstorming how to automate this for some time now. I recently finished designing something and am going to start putting it together within a couple months for a future reef system. This "perpetual reactor" will be using a thermosyphon to move and sterilize aquarium water to a prolonged UV light exposure chamber before overflowing to multiple phyto and rotifer cultures for back-up and/or manual rotation just in case of colony depletion.

 

[Jacked Reefer]

I have been brainstorming how to automate this for some time now. I recently finished designing something and am going to start putting it together within a couple months for a future reef system. "perpetual reactor" will use a thermosyphon to sterilize and move aquarium water to a prolonged UV light exposure chamber before overflowing to multiple phyto and rotifer cultures for back-up and/or manual rotation just in case of colony depletion.

That's pretty smart. I feel like sterilizing the water before it enters the culture is the best way to do it. dosing the culture separate would raise salinity.

 

[sixty_reefer]

That's pretty smart. I feel like sterilizing the water before it enters the culture is the best way to do it. dosing the culture separate would raise salinity.

I think it really depends on witch salt you using, and how much phytoplankton you going to add to the tank, there is a lot of ppl doing large phyto feeding on manual dose and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone complaining from salt creep.

 

[Jacked Reefer]

I think it really depends on witch salt you using, and how much phytoplankton you going to add to the tank, there is a lot of ppl doing large phyto feeding on manual dose and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone complaining from salt creep.

Salinity rising in a large tank wouldn’t be an issue. But my tank is 10 gallons and salinity is a big issue in nanos.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Salinity rising in a large tank wouldn’t be an issue. But my tank is 10 gallons and salinity is a big issue in nanos.

True, I do love the idea myself, my tough comes only from that once you start feeding phyto it increases the amount of zooplankton to some crazy levels and finding a way to filter and kill it before it enters the phytoplankton culture could cost some serious money, but definitely possible.

 

[sde1500]

Yea I think any UV sized enough to fully sterilize would be prohibitively expensive. Unless you’re really motivated to do it, I can’t see it being worth spending many hundreds to fully sterilize and automate this, compared to keeping it a manual process. I’d also say you’d want to add some sort of very small micron filter before the UV, to better prevent any pod/rotifer from entering the UV and possibly the phyto culture.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Yea I think any UV sized enough to fully sterilize would be prohibitively expensive. Unless you’re really motivated to do it, I can’t see it being worth spending many hundreds to fully sterilize and automate this, compared to keeping it a manual process. I’d also say you’d want to add some sort of very small micron filter before the UV, to better prevent any pod/rotifer from entering the UV and possibly the phyto culture.

Having it on continuous mode is not that expensive especially if you already own a doser and there’s one spare head available, there’s a link above to my thread were this is fully automated and running on continuous for over 8 months

 

[sde1500]

Having it on continuous mode is not that expensive especially if you already own a doser and there’s one spare head available, there’s a link above to my thread were this is fully automated and running on continuous for over 8 months

Yea I meant full on like the plan is here to include a UV sterilizer to bring tank water back.