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#1
12-25-2012, 05:01 PM
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phyto
if you must use miracle grow ,use the one for fruit and vegetables.i use micro algae grow from florida aqua farms,and all my cultures are grown in aqua medic reactors.the only live phyto that you can really grow from your lfs is if they culture them themselves,and are not mixed with various strains of micro algae.your best bet is to get the micro algae culture book from faf,and read up on them
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#3
12-25-2012, 07:12 PM
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I use a hydroponic fertilizer known in the orchid world as "Michigan State University fertilizer RO water Formula". It works great and it is a low phosphorus fertilizer 13-3-15. I believe that any hydroponic grade fertilizer low in phosphorus would work. I use it at 130 ppm NO3 (1g/l).
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#4
12-25-2012, 07:31 PM
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phyto
i use the density stick from faf to measure density-but you could make your own-an L shaped stick marked at i cm intervals with a white dot on the L part.your cultures will get more opaque as the culture grows.nanochloropus is a light green,tetraselmius is a forest green(and under a microscope it constantly moves)isocrysis is a tea coloured brown (and one of the hardest to grow).i'm also going to start danellia next year as it's very high in natural oils(they are culturing it for bio-fuels)
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#5
12-25-2012, 07:38 PM
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Ok, so let's say I tried culturing Phyco Pure www.alagen.com. Is it safe to grow? If I split it, add 1.019 and grow it under t5s... Would I be able to successfully feed my tank with it?
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#7
12-25-2012, 10:31 PM
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IMO, adding phytoplankton to a reef tank for corals is a very nice to have, but plenty of folks have success without doing so. If you were to worry about the fertilizer in the phytoplankton water being poured into your tank, you can use the same philosophy as larval fish rearing... where you're trying to package nutrients into rotifers. So you could feed phytoplankton to rotifers, and in an hour, strain the rotifers through micron screen, then just rinse the rotifers off the screen and into the tank.
If you were breeding marine fish, however, phytoplankton is essential to larval rearing in 1) it has far more HUFAs than other feeds (ie yeast) for sustaining larval fish development, 2) in larval rearing water quality management (buffer pH in constant light, consumes nitrogenous wastes) especially where you can't really have much flow or filtering in a larval rearing tank, and 3) keep the water darker (along with painted tank sides) so larvae aren't wasting energy swimming against the glass. Phyco Pure is a good product. I used to work next door to Eric at Algagen. Last edited by Reef_Geek; 12-25-2012 at 10:35 PM.
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#8
12-25-2012, 10:43 PM
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somebody else once posted this link, which is a good guide on algae culturing
http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/W3732E/W3732E00.HTM the hardest part about culturing algae is to keep them from getting contaminated with other micro organisms, leading to crashes. To get around this, use good sterile practices, and split up as much as possible so you always have something left as seed stock. That is why you would use dozens of small containers, ramping up to just a few large tanks of algae where you harvest from while restarting other new small cultures. 
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#9
12-26-2012, 04:57 AM
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Quote:
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#10
12-26-2012, 05:13 AM
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If you live in Edmonton, A LFS or someone will most likely already have a healthy stable Nannochloropsis culture brewing and maybe some rotifers. Nannochloropsis is one of the easiest types to start with. Once you have found a place to get some fresh Nannochloropsis to start a culture order some of this:
http://florida-aqua-farms.com/shop/micro-algae-grow/ and pick up one of these: http://florida-aqua-farms.com/shop/p...ulture-manual/ And if you are really in a pinch and cannot get phyto or rotifers in Canada you can order them too: http://florida-aqua-farms.com/produc...live-cultures/ Once it all arrives you just do a little reading, setup your equipment, and start your cultures. Last edited by FitoPharmer; 12-26-2012 at 05:15 AM.
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Hybrid Mode
