Poseiden pod and phyto system questions

[Derrick0580]

Long time lurker, finally decided to join and help where I can and ask questions that I can’t find solid answers to. Bear with me as I have read about every post I could find on phyto and pod culturing here and other forums.

i recently purchased poseidens phyto and pod cultivating kit. My first harvest from the starter packs they sent went as well as I could hope. My problems arose once I attempted to start my second batch from the original harvest. I filtered out my pods with the seive, added about 1/3 of them back to a fresh batch of saltwater and phyto mixed about 50/50. Then with the new phyto batch I did about 2/3 fresh saltwater and the rest phyto from the harvest with 2ml from each bottle of the supplied fertilizer. Now I feel I did everything I should have done, even wiped everything down with alcohol and let it dry before all else.
Less than 48 hours after restarting, my pod culture turned completely clear when the first batch was still greenish at 7 days when I harvested. I resorted to feeding them phyto from my harvest and using reef roids with that every other day, and water still remained clear. I read on here and other forums that pods like spirulina powder so I ordered some off amazon and added a small pinch to the culture, now my culture tank has a blue/green color, I can see the pods moving around so I know they are in there, but it appears to be a massive amount of them in the bottom, are those dead?? Will the water become clear as they consume the spirulina or is it dyed permantly from the powder?
Now to the phyto issue. The culture appears to be a yellowish color, not the bright neon green the starter was. It doesn’t smell like sulfur as most posts say dead phyto smells like. So from my reading, my culture is starving so I have added 6ml more of each of the 2 part fertilizer. I think it may be greening back up, but it also may be my imagination. I’m wondering if I maybe used too much phyto to restart the batch when the original starter was such a small pouch to begin with and the original fertilizer wasn’t enough. Any insight to my issues would be a godsend, thanks in advance!

 

[boacvh]

I have the same system. And in my experience the copepods will be fine in clear water for a while. I harvest every Sunday and by the time I harvest the copepod culture is completely clear. I have even gone on vacation for 10+ days and the pods make it with no issues. The ones at the bottom sometimes just spring to life. FWIW, I do not clean the pod container at all (phyto yes, but pods no). No alcohol. nothing. I don't even replace the bag. And the culture is larger and larger.
As far as the phyto getting yellow, its the tell tale sign the culture is starting to die IMO. But Even when yellow I just mix it really well and it takes a greenish color again and it is still good for restarting the next batch. Try the culture a few times and try to measure the time when its neon green to yellow and harvest a day before. For me temp plays a big effect. In the winter I harvest every 7 days. In the summer it turns yellow around day 5 so I harvest every 4 days.
One last thing I did is that I had way too much phyto after the cultures so I got a second tank for pods and now I have the perfect ratio IMO. One phyto culture feeds my tank and leaves enough for 2 copepod tanks.
Hope this helps!

 

[3sgterror]

As Boacvh stated, I would worry about your pod culture going clear. It probably went clear because the pod population is growing and consuming more phyto and at a quicker rate. As stated, they will last a little while in the culture even when clear. If you wanted you could add some phyto to the tank to green it up, but its not necessary. I never add anything else besides the phyto. I also read about reef roids or other foods for the pods, but I haven't found it necessary at all.

I use to fill about a 3rd of the way with phyto at reset and the rest with salt water. At this ratio, I produced more phyto than I needed. So I did the same with purchasing another pod culture container from Poseidon. Now I culture tigger and tisbe pods separately, 1 for phyto, and I still have enough for dosing my tank.

 

[Jen1978]

Long time lurker, finally decided to join and help where I can and ask questions that I can’t find solid answers to. Bear with me as I have read about every post I could find on phyto and pod culturing here and other forums.

i recently purchased poseidens phyto and pod cultivating kit. My first harvest from the starter packs they sent went as well as I could hope. My problems arose once I attempted to start my second batch from the original harvest. I filtered out my pods with the seive, added about 1/3 of them back to a fresh batch of saltwater and phyto mixed about 50/50. Then with the new phyto batch I did about 2/3 fresh saltwater and the rest phyto from the harvest with 2ml from each bottle of the supplied fertilizer. Now I feel I did everything I should have done, even wiped everything down with alcohol and let it dry before all else.
Less than 48 hours after restarting, my pod culture turned completely clear when the first batch was still greenish at 7 days when I harvested. I resorted to feeding them phyto from my harvest and using reef roids with that every other day, and water still remained clear. I read on here and other forums that pods like spirulina powder so I ordered some off amazon and added a small pinch to the culture, now my culture tank has a blue/green color, I can see the pods moving around so I know they are in there, but it appears to be a massive amount of them in the bottom, are those dead?? Will the water become clear as they consume the spirulina or is it dyed permantly from the powder?
Now to the phyto issue. The culture appears to be a yellowish color, not the bright neon green the starter was. It doesn’t smell like sulfur as most posts say dead phyto smells like. So from my reading, my culture is starving so I have added 6ml more of each of the 2 part fertilizer. I think it may be greening back up, but it also may be my imagination. I’m wondering if I maybe used too much phyto to restart the batch when the original starter was such a small pouch to begin with and the original fertilizer wasn’t enough. Any insight to my issues would be a godsend, thanks in advance!

I can't speak much to the pod culture but when I did phyto, yes many batches can lose color and then darken back up with each passing day. If it's not darker by day 4 or 5 then you should worry.

 

[Derrick0580]

Well my second batch of phyto went from yellow to clear with everything settling on the bottom. It never smelled bad but I tossed the entire culture and started a fresh culture with some I had left over from the first good batch I made. I went with the exact measurements from the original starter culture, 250 ml phyto, fill to line with fresh saltwater, and 2 ml from each bottle of fertilizer. Just overnight, the culture went from a light green to a nice neon green. At this point I’m thinking my 2nd batch was too dense to begin with so it reached the plateau sooner than anticipated. However my pod culture was absolutely teaming with pods. I thinned them out as well with the next culture, maybe used 10-15% of what I filtered out to start new culture and rest was divided between my two tanks. For those of you with the poseiden setup, how do you clean the nest? I just wiped the algae off of it when I rinsed it in a bowl of saltwater but then I had a bowl full of pods and algae with no real way to separate the two. I would like to be able to seed my tanks with clean pods and not be dumping algae from the culture into my tanks.

 

[boacvh]

Well my second batch of phyto went from yellow to clear with everything settling on the bottom. It never smelled bad but I tossed the entire culture and started a fresh culture with some I had left over from the first good batch I made. I went with the exact measurements from the original starter culture, 250 ml phyto, fill to line with fresh saltwater, and 2 ml from each bottle of fertilizer. Just overnight, the culture went from a light green to a nice neon green. At this point I’m thinking my 2nd batch was too dense to begin with so it reached the plateau sooner than anticipated. However my pod culture was absolutely teaming with pods. I thinned them out as well with the next culture, maybe used 10-15% of what I filtered out to start new culture and rest was divided between my two tanks. For those of you with the poseiden setup, how do you clean the nest? I just wiped the algae off of it when I rinsed it in a bowl of saltwater but then I had a bowl full of pods and algae with no real way to separate the two. I would like to be able to seed my tanks with clean pods and not be dumping algae from the culture into my tanks.

I never clean it.
My fox face and snails take care of the little algae that makes it pretty fast.

 

[Derrick0580]

I never clean it.
My fox face and snails take care of the little algae that makes it pretty fast.

I dump the new pods into the fuge area in my sump….guess I can’t scrape out the algae into the display and pour the rest in the sump!

 

[Jay'sReefBugs]

Copepod cultures going clear is a good sign. Clear to the eye doesn't mean the water is acutaly clear of food trust me they can go weeks in clear water with no issue's. You're seeing them mass at the bottom because that's where #1 food sources settle and #2 nauplius settle and form into juveniles.

 

[Derrick0580]

Copepod cultures going clear is a good sign. Clear to the eye doesn't mean the water is acutaly clear of food trust me they can go weeks in clear water with no issue's. You're seeing them mass at the bottom because that's where #1 food sources settle and #2 nauplius settle and form into juveniles.

This is good to know, i knew it would go clear, but my first batch stayed green up until the 6th day. I didn’t expect it to go clear soo soon on the second batch.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

This is good to know, i knew it would go clear, but my first batch stayed green up until the 6th day. I didn’t expect it to go clear soo soon on the second batch.

I am having this same issue with the Poseidon set up with the pod culture going clear after 2 days but when I first started it would stay green for 5-7 days for first 4-5 batch’s now last 2 water went clear after 2 days and now at 5 day mark it’s still clear but has like smoke in the water and very little pods. Did you ever figure this out? Are you still using the system ?

 

[((FORDTECH))]

Also same issue how do you clean the nest. Mine has 6-8 inch long hair algae on it

 

[Derrick0580]

I am having this same issue with the Poseidon set up with the pod culture going clear after 2 days but when I first started it would stay green for 5-7 days for first 4-5 batch’s now last 2 water went clear after 2 days and now at 5 day mark it’s still clear but has like smoke in the water and very little pods. Did you ever figure this out? Are you still using the system ?

I ended up making a diy pod hotel out of corrugated plastic and drilled a hole through it and slid the air tube through it and got rid of the loofah. I think the algae was eating the phyto faster than the pods could. Now my water stays tinted longer than 7 days if I don’t get around to harvesting by then. No matter how much algae I scraped off the loofah I could never get it all and it was growing back fast.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

I ended up making a diy pod hotel out of corrugated plastic and drilled a hole through it and slid the air tube through it and got rid of the loofah. I think the algae was eating the phyto faster than the pods could. Now my water stays tinted longer than 7 days if I don’t get around to harvesting by then. No matter how much algae I scraped off the loofah I could never get it all and it was growing back fast.

Yes I would scrape all mine off Jen 7 days later against 6 inches long. I contacted Poseidon to ask him that question about the hair algae eating the phyto but didn’t get a response on that instead wants to just send me more pods even tho my issue is not solved. Was told need to clean with alcohol but obviously have been doing all this per the instructions.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

Now that I started do little research on this I’ve found many people with the same issue of first week weeks pod population was great and water stay green 5-7 days then all a sudden only green 2 days and low pod counts. Not many answers tho posted

 

[Pistondog]

No answers to pod issues.
For phyto, keeping the water moving as much as possible helps a lot.
I have a separate air pump for 1 of 4 phyto cultures; it never goes clear and is the fastest grower. Sharing the air pump on 3 or 4 posidens jars was a problem for me, due to reduced air flow and water movement.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

No answers to pod issues.
For phyto, keeping the water moving as much as possible helps a lot.
I have a separate air pump for 1 of 4 phyto cultures; it never goes clear and is the fastest grower. Sharing the air pump on 3 or 4 posidens jars was a problem for me, due to reduced air flow and water movement.

I’m not really having phyto issues but have noticed while running 3 tanks 2 phyto and 1 pod seems like the phyto does not have enough flow because how much settles on bottom so I have been thinking about adding another or stronger pump. I do really wish I had some answers on the pods tho. Seems a lot of people have this same issue

 

[Derrick0580]

I’m not really having phyto issues but have noticed while running 3 tanks 2 phyto and 1 pod seems like the phyto does not have enough flow because how much settles on bottom so I have been thinking about adding another or stronger pump. I do really wish I had some answers on the pods tho. Seems a lot of people have this same issue

I would opt for a bigger air pump or adding a second smaller one for just the pods. I learned that if I cut about an inch and half off the hard tube it doesn’t sit against the bottom or side. Had a problem in the past where the bag was against the end and blocked all the flow and the phyto settled. Caught it soon enough that was able to get it mixed back up and saved the culture. The email I got back from poseiden suggested buying a second loofah and swapping them back and forth and just using diluted bleach to kill the algae. I know it works because when I swapped to the diy pod hotel, I soaked the loofah in bleach water and it was 100% algae free over night.

 

[boacvh]

I am having this same issue with the Poseidon set up with the pod culture going clear after 2 days but when I first started it would stay green for 5-7 days for first 4-5 batch’s now last 2 water went clear after 2 days and now at 5 day mark it’s still clear but has like smoke in the water and very little pods. Did you ever figure this out? Are you still using the system ?

I changed the air filters. That worked for me.

 

[((FORDTECH))]

I changed the air filters. That worked for me.

After how long do you change them cause mine are only 7-8 weeks old

 

[Joe31415]

Also same issue how do you clean the nest. Mine has 6-8 inch long hair algae on it

I'm having all kinds of problems with the posieden reef system as well. My phyto runs for 2 days and by day 3 has crashed. Harvesting every other day results in having far more than I have any use for.

The pods were doing okay, but never really got all that built up and the nest is *covered* an algae that ends up 6+ inches long and I can't figure out a good way to clean it.
I'm thinking of running the nest in just tap water and H202 to see if it'll kill off the algae, but It might just make it worse (not that that's really a loss at this point).

As far as keeping the phyto agitated, I picked up a magnetic stirrer, though I can't say if it really made any difference.

I ended up making a diy pod hotel out of corrugated plastic and drilled a hole through it and slid the air tube through it and got rid of the loofah

I'm thinking I might try that. My LFS got in a shipment of Apex pods. I might give those a shot and see what happens.

Luckily, both my tanks seem to have a healthy population of pods (and the pods in one are enormous, but it's just frags/inverts in that tank).