Phytoplankton

[saltgogi]

I am thinking of starting my own phytoplankton colony. Would it be ok to use those plant leds that are specifically for plant growth instead of flourescent bulbs?

I have spare of this bulb and was thinking of putting two of them on a jar of phyto.

 

[iamacat]

Should plenty fine. Contamination is the bugaboo with phyto

 

[saltgogi]

Should plenty fine. Contamination is the bugaboo with phyto

What do you mean contamination?
I've grown plenty in the past but have stopped because I ended up throwing a lot out. But I think phyto is pretty important and wanted to start growing it again because I cannot justify that it'll cost close to $30 with shipping from algaebarn.

 

[jt8791]

I’ll be following, hopefully someone has some information. I’m thinking of trying to have multiple live food sources in the tank and I suppose sustaining phytoplankton is worth adding in.

I haven’t gotten far enough in my research to see if I could have copepods, brine, mysis and phyto colonies in a 20 successfully.

Any tips in that department? Kinda thinking a good 2-3” sand bed, oolite or Fiji pink, maybe 5 small live rocks, couple live rock rubble piles. With chaeto and red graciliara possibly

I was gonna go cheap with a finnex planted plus, but I’m going fluval marine 3.0 for the display and may spring for plant 3.0 for the 20 if they are worth the extra money for macro algae growth.

 

[iamacat]

Phyto crashes are common unless you take precautions not to contaminate your culture. Example being tank water

 

[cubereefer]

just use a regular white light bulb or white led. i grow phyto , pods and all types of macros and only use white on my phyto for 16 hrs a day.

 

[HockeyRooster]

The light will be fine. I used some old led puck lights that used to be under my kitchen cabinets. Made a little reflective box for it.
As noted above, clean everything well. I use rubbing alcohol on everything including the airline tube prior to starting a new batch.

 

[afboundguy]

Any grow light should work. I have a screw in one I got from Home Depot. As far as contamination you need to make sure you clean and sanitize/sterilize everything. If you don't bacteria can get in the culture and crash the culture.

I use large glass mason jars and I clean them out with soap and water and then put them in the dishwasher. You could also microwave the glass container in the microwave for 60 seconds to sanitize them. I also use hydrogen peroxide to clean the container and let it dry. I used to use rubbing alcohol but hydrogen peroxide works better as it's water soluble. A big issue I had with contamination with the rigid airline tubing but now I just use 1/4" RO tubing as it's super cheap and I just cut new ones every week when I split/harvest the cultures.

I also use distilled water from the grocery store now instead of RODI as RODI water can still have small amounts of bacteria which could eventually lead to a culture crash. I had no issues for months and months using RODI water but then my cultures started to crash. Now that I'm using distilled water I haven't had an issue. It's super cheap and distilled water is clean. If I don't use the entire gallon of distilled water I don't use what's left over in the jug for the following weeks culture just to be super safe and I add it to my RODI top off reservoir. You could also boil RODI water to sterilize it but I think it's much much easier and less time consuming to just use gallon jugs of distilled water.

Hope this helps!

 

[saltgogi]

Could i use hydrogen peroxide to sterilize the containers? I'd assume yes cause it's function is to kill bacteria.
And distilled water is a good tip. I'll keep in mind.

 

[saltgogi]

I’ll be following, hopefully someone has some information. I’m thinking of trying to have multiple live food sources in the tank and I suppose sustaining phytoplankton is worth adding in.

I haven’t gotten far enough in my research to see if I could have copepods, brine, mysis and phyto colonies in a 20 successfully.

Any tips in that department? Kinda thinking a good 2-3” sand bed, oolite or Fiji pink, maybe 5 small live rocks, couple live rock rubble piles. With chaeto and red graciliara possibly

I was gonna go cheap with a finnex planted plus, but I’m going fluval marine 3.0 for the display and may spring for plant 3.0 for the 20 if they are worth the extra money for macro algae growth.

I'd rather get some black boxes instead of fluval lights.

 

[jt8791]

I'd rather get some black boxes instead of fluval lights.

I was debating on going that route but wasn’t sure if I wanted to hang a light over the tank. For soft corals, gsp and maybe Xenia, would I see a major difference between the two lights?

For my fuge I could just go finnex planted plus, grew chaeto no problem in my last tank. I worry a bit with the salt creep on those though but didn’t have my last one long enough to see any problems arise.

 

[saltgogi]

I was debating on going that route but wasn’t sure if I wanted to hang a light over the tank. For soft corals, gsp and maybe Xenia, would I see a major difference between the two lights?

For my fuge I could just go finnex planted plus, grew chaeto no problem in my last tank. I worry a bit with the salt creep on those though but didn’t have my last one long enough to see any problems arise.

Fluval lights might be enough but I think you'd get better growth and coloration from blue boxes.
I went from a cheap led light to blue boxes few years back and there was a world of difference. And then I went and got radions and another world of difference from the blue boxes. You pretty much get what you pay for i guess.

 

[jt8791]

The fluval isn’t the cheapest either, $190 last I saw. If I had gone with a 4’ tank I probably would spring for an ai prime 16hd. Want to say I read some where they only had a 2x2 light spread so I may need 2 or go to the 32hd.

Saving money on live rock so might as well put extra into the lights. Might go all out and use their fuge model too.

 

[afboundguy]

Could i use hydrogen peroxide to sterilize the containers? I'd assume yes cause it's function is to kill bacteria.
And distilled water is a good tip. I'll keep in mind.

This is what I now use instead of rubbing alcohol as I don't have to try as hard to try out the rubbing alcohol since it's byproduct is essentially water...

 

[jeffchapok]

I use an LED painter's light from Lowe's and grow it in a plastic fish bowl. And it comes out DARK. As for contamination, I do almost nothing to avoid it and have never lost a batch. I've added tank water and even tried to hatch brine shrimp in it (bad idea - too messy and the shrimp didn't hatch any better than with plain water).

 

[saltgogi]

I use an LED painter's light from Lowe's and grow it in a plastic fish bowl. And it comes out DARK. As for contamination, I do almost nothing to avoid it and have never lost a batch. I've added tank water and even tried to hatch brine shrimp in it (bad idea - too messy and the shrimp didn't hatch any better than with plain water).

Yeah in the past, i never knew contamination was even a thing with phyto. So i never had issues either with it.

 

[Rhoads238]

This is really cool i'm defiantly going to give this a whirl once my tank is up and running