Phytoplankton starter culture - Calgary
 

Hi,
I want to start saline phytoplankton culture (green water) for feeding but I can't find starter culture here in Calgary. Any ideas where to find it?
I tried looking in local stores, but nobody seems to carry such risky item :cry:. Online prices were approachin $100 which seems little too much.
I do not need monoculture of specific strain, mix will do.

If you are in Calgary and have some green water in sea aquarium, please contact me at ivanivanca@yahoo.com

Thanks for your advices,

Ivan

I have some Isochrisis
 

Hi Ivan

I have a pure strain of T. Isochrisis that I had shipped by Dr. Adelaide out of the US. I will gladly give you as much as you need in exchange for a couple of things.

1. Share your experience culturing phytoplankton with me - I have found it to be a complex subject and I am not sure that I have all of the subtleties figured out yet.

2. Give some back to me when my culture invariably crashes.

Brad

IMO one type of phyto will always beat the other type when using multiple strains of phyto

because in the long term nutrient intake from a bigger strain ( I think will win) you will want to stick to one type of phyto to culture IMO

multiple cultures/single when bought are more for people that add it right away or with in a month because it loses it's nutritional value every week imo

which refrigeration and lack of light/(flow I think) slows down phyto's growth

Any chance I can join in on this too? Atempt number 1 has failed, I guess the stuff I was feeding to the tank was too old to start a culture with

I just ordered a culture manual and will tell you if it work's step by step if anyone is interested using the disc culture and liquid f2 fertalizer

@phtyo4life - I would be interested in learning from your project. I currently have a phyto culture going, but I am still very new to this and it's really not all that easy. I would be happy to share my experiences as well.

@Eyford01 - Should have some phyto ready for you in a couple of days. I will keep you updated.

@Everyone

Another reason why a pure strain is really the only way to culture phyto is that some strains require slightly different conditions. If the conditions of one of the more sensative strains are not met, it will crash and take your whole culture with it.

No single strain of phyto has all of the nutritional elements that are required for a complete and balanced diet. This is why commercial phyto products are usually multiple strains. However, you really have to culture them seperately.

Ocean city sells 1 Litre bottles of Live Phytoplankton (nanocloropisis) , they have the F/2 Feed too to start your own culture.

sounds good I'll keep you updated on the nanno should have it going in a few week's right after double checking the culture manual before starting

So - my culture (T. Isochrysis) crashed after roughly 30 days. I learned a lot in the process. So that others can benifit from my trials and errors, here are some thoughts.

Firstly - make sure that you know why you want to culture phytoplankton. My initial motivation was to feed a secondary culture of copepods which would then be food for a Mandarin.

Secondly - While this sounds perfectly reasonable, it is far from easy and a LOT of work. If you are doing this simply to keep a mandarin, then head my warning and stop. It is not worth the effort or expense.

(BTW - After a couple of weeks eating the pods in my tank, my mandarin started eating spirulina enriched frozen brine and mysis).

Some key points from my experience.

About pods
* Understand the difference between harpacticoid and calinoid copepods.
* Tiger-Pods from Reef Nutrition have particular challanges surviving in a reef tank. I did not have a good experience with them. if you have a reef tank, my advice is to avoid this species. They may be usefull in a FOWLR.
* copepods DO survive the trip through your return pump MOST of the time. The problem is that in a high flow system, they make the trip again and again. Within a day or two, they have all made the trip many times and are all now dead.
* copepods are not necessarily cultured the same way as rotifers. There are likely some similarities, but if you are culturing copepods - make sure you have a plan that is not based on research around culturing rotifers.
* Everybody and their cousin cultures rotifers - not nearly as many people culture copepods.
* Mandarins will eat other pods - not just copepods. I have lots of ampipods in my tank and my mandarin loves them.
* Do not buy copepods that you can not see. If you can't see them, neither can your mandarin.
* For a wealth of knowledge - search the web for "Dr. Adelaide Rhodes" - She sells everything you need and will ship to Canada if you are really nice to her. I brought in my T. Iso culture from her as well as a bulk culture of 5000 Tibse sp. copepods. They were all big enough to count and all very active when they arrived. (Group order anyone?)

About Phytoplankton (T. Isochrysis unless otherwise specified)
* Nanno is easier to culture, but less useful. Copepods don't benifit much from Nanno.
* T. Iso is extremely sensative to temperature. It must be constant. I'm not sure what "ideal" is - does anyone else know?
* Bacterial contamination is a real problem. Have a strategy for dealing with this.
* Predation (ie. introduction of rotifers/pods) is potentially a problem.
* I was never able to figure out when to split my culture. It is difficult to tell when the nutrients have been consumed.
* If you wait to long to split the culture, it will crash.
* If you split the culture to soon, it will thin out and may crash.
* Split early if you are not sure.
* Put the live phyto in your tank at your own risk. I would advise against this based on the presence of unconsumed nutrients in the phytoplankton. If you split to early, there will be excess nutrients. If you wait until the nutrients are consumed, the likelyhood of a crash increased.
* SP should be around 1.019 (not full strength SW).

About automation of your system
* Forget about it - you can't automate this on a small scale. Possibly on a larger commercial scale, but not in your basement.
* I bought all of the pumps to automate my system (Aqua Medic Reef Doser Quad Pump). They made it out of the box, but have not yet been plugged in.
* Paristaltic pumps can be used to move phyto and copepods, but you are unlikely to get to the point where you are hooking the pumps up.
* I bought the Aqua Medic Plankton Reactor Light product from JL. I actually like this as a culture vessile for phyto. However, I never figured out how to use it for copepods.

Please feel very free to message me. I invested a lot of time and money into making this work and would gladly share more of my experience. Just because it didn't work for me on my first attemp, doesn't mean that it won't work for you.

-> Please post your experiences to this thread. I may decide to try again, but for different reasons.

regarding nitokra lacustris and tisbe harpacticoid

I found this pdf laying around on the internet from Adelaide Rhodes

http://www.fishlarvae.com/e/BigBang/Rhodes.pdf

in there. from my understanding, it mention's on how the harpacticoid copepod nitokra lacustris can be rich in HUFA both in dha and epa while not consuming live phyto but consuming food not rich in epa/dha such as baker yeast/Tomato or vegetable juice etc but can make their own fatty acids without phyto

I believe artemia and rotifers need epa/dha enrichment in order to get there hufa's

nanno is high in epa while t-iso is high in dha

but for the baby harp's I think they still need phyto because they are pelagic (in the water column) not benthic (on the surfaces) still looking in to it thou

the pdf also says on how these harps when just born could potential replace rotifer and artemia brine shrimp. in fish rearing

As well as providing a superior diet, harpacticoid nauplii which are not eaten would be able to find nourishment in tanks by feeding on detritus, the biofilm and bacteria, maintaining their nutritional value as well as keeping the tank clean.

Copepods - Podcast Episode 69 talking reef
http://www.talkingreef.com/forums/po...sode-69-a.html

i'm culturing nanno now but might switch over in the near future to t-iso I just need to make sure I can grow nanno phyto first