HarryLongo
New member
Instead of buying the expensive store bought microalgae phtyoplankton, which stinks to high heaven when opened
( because the stuff is either dead or fertilized with manure ) I've been growing my own for 4 months now from a single purchase of one petree disk culture.
I'm using 3, 6500K screw in flourescent bulbs of 75 watt output running 20 hours a day around 3, 2 liter soda bottles, with an airstone in each churning up the mix, in steam distilled water you get from the supermarket.
I've opted for store bought liquid fertilizer which has no copper in it rather than the fertilizer I got with the culture. I find the liquid fert. works better than that which came with the culture.
Just a few days ago I started adding a DIY CO2 reactor to bubble in CO2 into one of the bottles to see if this helps the growth of the phytoplankton and I gotta say it does. In just 3 days I have an ever darkening green culture which I'll observe a few more days before removal and replenishing with new steam distilled water.
How to get CO2 from yeast and sugar water is readily obtainable from the Web. CO2 is a vital element for plant growth and its logical to assume it would add to the growth of home cultured phytoplankton, which it does. There is no odor whatsoever in the home grown stuff and its population is roughly counted by a dip stick inserted down into the growing container... when the bottom of the stick can not be seen, X amount of phytoplankton is present counted in the millions of parts... somewhere on this computer is the fomular for this count which I can email to interested parties for the asking, once I find it.
( because the stuff is either dead or fertilized with manure ) I've been growing my own for 4 months now from a single purchase of one petree disk culture.
I'm using 3, 6500K screw in flourescent bulbs of 75 watt output running 20 hours a day around 3, 2 liter soda bottles, with an airstone in each churning up the mix, in steam distilled water you get from the supermarket.
I've opted for store bought liquid fertilizer which has no copper in it rather than the fertilizer I got with the culture. I find the liquid fert. works better than that which came with the culture.
Just a few days ago I started adding a DIY CO2 reactor to bubble in CO2 into one of the bottles to see if this helps the growth of the phytoplankton and I gotta say it does. In just 3 days I have an ever darkening green culture which I'll observe a few more days before removal and replenishing with new steam distilled water.
How to get CO2 from yeast and sugar water is readily obtainable from the Web. CO2 is a vital element for plant growth and its logical to assume it would add to the growth of home cultured phytoplankton, which it does. There is no odor whatsoever in the home grown stuff and its population is roughly counted by a dip stick inserted down into the growing container... when the bottom of the stick can not be seen, X amount of phytoplankton is present counted in the millions of parts... somewhere on this computer is the fomular for this count which I can email to interested parties for the asking, once I find it.
