https://www.getpods.com/
- Is where I bought all my pods and algae starter kits.
And for the fertilizer I went to eBay I just bought the smallest/cheapest bottle of F2 I could find.
-Just a cheap heat lamp with a standard light bulb anywhere from 60-100 watts for 10 hrs a day.
-Biggest thing I found is to use rubbing alcohol to sterilize every component utilized and use either RODI or Distilled water.
-Salinity and temp can be in a large range (pretty forgiving)
-I took four water bottles and split my cutler four different ways to experiment with ratios. I put anywhere from 1 to 4 oz of phytoplankton in the bottle. Topped off the bottle with salt water (about 30-32 ppt to allow for evaporation). And then added anywhere from .5 ml- 2 ml of f2 fertilizer. All cultures took off fine, some quicker than others. The point being it’s pretty forgiving as well.
-One other thing I found is that if it turns white just leave it for a week. Everything I watched and read said the culture crashed if it turns white. This might be true but I had one “crash” or turn white, and I just left it and by the end of the week it started turning green again...
-This is a pretty easy project, in my experience as long as you don’t cross contaminate different strans of phytoplankton and keep all components sterilized everything else is pretty forgiving
