Anyone ever consider a NSW business?

[Subsea]

We get filtered seawater from the Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas, Texas. The water is pumped from about 100 meters off shore into a large settling tank, is generally left undisturbed for multiple days to settle particulates, and then is filtered through a standard string filter before we get it. We collect the filtered seawater in 20-liter hard polyethylene carboys and can store it at room temperature in complete darkness for at least 6 months without any evident microbial growth or salt precipitation.



Near-shore seawater can vary significantly in salinity. Thus, when we are ready to use some of the stored seawater, we check its salinity and (if necessary) add a small amount of distilled water or Instant Ocean to bring the salinity to 30 PPT - within 1 PPM. After adding desired additional nutrients (typically nitrate and/or phosphate), and thorough mixing, we pasteurize it on two successive days, with cooling to room temperature for at least 18 hours between the two heat treatments. This "tyndallization" process is done in glass containers that don't have any internal scratches, in order to avoid seeding crystals that would lead to salt precipitation. If vitamins are required for a particular medium, they are added to the cooled seawater after the final pasteurization. The pasteurized seawater, with or without enrichment, is then kept covered and stored at refrigerator temperature in very dim light or darkness. We prefer to use it for inoculating algae within 2 months after it has been prepared.

Some of our red and green macroalgae can be maintained without disturbance (no mixing or carbon dioxide enrichment) in this media for 6 months or more, where they grow rather slowly without significant contamination under 12h:12h day:night cycle AT relatively low light intensity.

In growing many different strains of marine microalgae and macroalgae, we have not observed any significant differences in the use of natural sea water and Instant Ocean. Transport of natural seawater is somewhat expensive, which we moderate by hauling 150 gallons at a time. I am not certain of the cost difference, when labor is included, between using Instant Ocean and natural seawater.

There are surely significant differences in our requirements and the needs of those who manage large marine aquaria. I would be interested in seeing the comments of those who criticized the use of natural sea water.

Jerry

PS: second email


Hello Patrick,

I don't want to get into correspondence with this group because of my time constraints. You may post what I wrote, but please first change that "œAT" to small letters.

I saw your post and should correct a few points.
I am not the head of a college but am a professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences at the University of Texas. My other title is Director of the Culture Collection of Algae (known as UTEX) at the University of Texas at Austin. Our collection of microalgae might possibly be the largest and most diverse in the world, but several others are quite comparable in size. Our collection of algae was first established in 1952 as the only major publicly accessible repository of algae in the Americas. The focus was primarily on freshwater and edaphic algae, although some marine microalgae and macroalgae were maintained. The NCMA in Bigelow Maine was established some years later as a marine phytoplankton collection. Since then UTEX and NCMA have remained the primary general repositories of algae in the USA, with UTEX focusing more on freshwater species while NCMA includes mostly marine species. However, both collections work with freshwater and marine scientists, and both include marine and freshwater strains.

Jerry

PS: Jerry is more humble than I. It would seem that I am the braggart, not the Texacans. I was incorrect on some detail, which he has corrected in his two emails.

 

[Paul B]

Raw seawater contains a little bacteria and there are two ways to use it. If you plan to use it immediately Like I usually do, I just adjust the temp and add some ASW because the water here in New York is weak. Then I dump it in. But if you want to wait a couple of days, it sometimes clouds up a bit because of the organics such as tiny jellyfish, pods, bits of seaweed, half eaten pieces of hot dogs etc. This cloudiness is not dangerous and the water can still be used. It is just a bacterial explosion because when you put NSW in a container, the bacteria colonize the sides of the container and multiply in numbers like the weirdo's that go to Lady GaGa concerts. After that bacteria fill up on the organics, they die and cause a little clouding. In a few days it clears and you can then store it forever, drink it with a little gin or dump it in your tank. I have been using it since Eisenhower was President. He was after Lincoln.
IMO NSW is much better than fake water and if you are worried about bacteria, parasites, Godzilla Larvae etc. You may be a Sissy or Girly Man

 

[billsreef]

Thanks for the comments, folks. Very helpful.

Or here, but it sometimes smells like Coney Island dirty water hot dogs.

I think I'd choose the hot dog water.

Wise choice, especially considering Paul forgot to mention the infamous Coney Island Whitefish :eek2: :lol:

Patrick,

Thanks for that information from Jerry

Paul,

Haven't seen any Godzilla larvae, but have seen more than few of these

 

[BeanAnimal]

My fear (only half joking) would be that some nitwit (or combination of nitwits) would decide (of course after you make your capital expenditures, advertising, etc.) that they are not getting their fair share of your profit from free water.

Collection permits, transport permits, grey water (yup you touched it) permits... I mean when it is all said and done, how could it be fair that you can take water from the ocean and sell it?

 

[Mr sea water]

Hi. I collect in the UK, I have never found it needs cleaning up? It is always been spot on and have used it for years, but I do run a lot of UV a commercial bank and Ozone we collect a 1000l at a time, the pump fills the tank in two minutes. I have stored it for 5months and used it. Steve.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks for the input everyone.

Another substantial concern is that, since folks lose creatures all the time to unknown causes, someone will undoubtedly loose something shortly after using the water, will blame it, maybe sue, and certainly badmouth the water, and proving it wasn't responsible (assuming it actually wasn't) would be nearly impossible.

 

[Subsea]

more conversation with Jerry Brand at UTEX


The original idea of using only natural seawater was that some marine microalgae require trace amounts of organic nutrients, such as vitamins, that don't tolerate evaporation and reconstitution of seawater. It was not known what components were missing, but natural seawater supplied whatever it was. Now we at UTEX keep stock solutions of 5 vitamins that we know are needed by some marine algae. We add a cocktail of the necessary vitamins after pasteurization of the seawater.

The idea of pasteurization (in our case heating to near 100 deg. C for at least an hour) on two consecutive days is that the first heating kills most actively growing microbial contaminants, but not resting spores. Brief heating the first day, followed by a cooling period, triggers the resting stages of most surviving microbes to transform to actively growing forms. Heating the second day then kills the revived organized. The originally developed process, called tyndallization, required heating for 3 consecutive days instead of two. That almost (but not completely) sterilizes the medium. Autoclaving (pressure-cooker temperature) for at least 10 minutes kills everything, but also frequently causes precipitation of salts from marine waters - so we avoid it. The use of aseptic technique to filter seawater through a 0.45 micrometer pore size membrane also completely sterilizes marine media, but it is rather slow and expensive, so we do that only when necessary.
Jerry

 

[Paul B]

Haven't seen any Godzilla larvae, but have seen more than few of these

Bill, reminds me of a girl I used to date

 

[GreshamH]

Sir,
You are speaking in terms of phytoplankton and system volume size.

Jerry Brand, heads the Molecular Cell & Developemental Biology College of Natural Science at UT. They seldom grow micro algae except to conduct seminars for phycologiosts from all over the world. He is in his 70's and has traveled across the globe accumulating micro algae collections from academia and private collections for the last 40 years. Their collection is stored with liquid nitrogen and maintained by a staff of researches that take pride in their accomplishment. You should discuss with him, that he needs to sterilize his NSW.
Patrick

Im talking microalgae just as you were, and no need to call me sir. Seeing your initial post, it was easy for me to make the stretch you were talking about marine microalgae, not both FW and SW You also spoke about them culturing, again, easy to assume (yes, yes, I know) you were talking about culturing.

 

[billsreef]

Thanks for the input everyone.

Another substantial concern is that, since folks lose creatures all the time to unknown causes, someone will undoubtedly loose something shortly after using the water, will blame it, maybe sue, and certainly badmouth the water, and proving it wasn't responsible (assuming it actually wasn't) would be nearly impossible.

While I might use nominally filtered or unfiltered NSW myself, for a business I would be micron and UV filtering for the those reasons

more conversation with Jerry Brand at UTEX


The original idea of using only natural seawater was that some marine microalgae require trace amounts of organic nutrients, such as vitamins, that don't tolerate evaporation and reconstitution of seawater. It was not known what components were missing, but natural seawater supplied whatever it was.

That's what I suspected. Thank Jerry for us :beer:

Bill, reminds me of a girl I used to date

:eek1:

 

[Reefvet]

.. I have never found it needs cleaning up ...

...but I do run a lot of UV a commercial bank and Ozone

Aren't those two very powerful methods for cleaning ?

I've used NSW for 20+ years. It's collected a quarter mile offshore, stored in an underground well and filtered down to 20 microns. Can't imagine going back to ASW. I'd quit the hobby first.

 

[ganjero]

I usually do, I just adjust the temp and add some ASW because the water here in New York is weak.

Weak in what sense?

 

[Paul B]

Weak in what sense?

Low in salinity

 

[Arthur1]

Randy, it has been a while! Last time I saw you was I believe in Boston doing a lecture. I have thought a lot of what you are inquiring about. I live on the Cape and the ocean is well, all around. I used to go to the Cape Cod Canal in the middle of the winter with a bucket and rope to collect water for my own personal fish only tank a long time ago. I've considered doing this again, just on a larger scale to "experiment" with the water, testing parameters and identifying microorganisms via a microscope. I've also thought a lot about sterilization techniques such as with the obvious UV and ozone techniques as well as "sediment" filtration. I don't know if you remember Daire from the BRS but she did collect natural sea water from a certain location but at some point decided to go with the synthetic sea salt mix route. I asked her why and besides being a pain to collect she said that there were certain water parameters that were also off that she always had to adjust.

 

[dkeller_nc]

Randy - An alternative perspective to the downsides of a NSW collection business would be the potential cost advantage you might have for folks with large systems. My guess is that it'd be cost prohibitive to sell 5-10 gallons at a time, but I know that there are a fair number of contractors, particularly in Florida, that deliver a few hundred to a few thousand gallons of seawater at a time. They've been alluded to/pictured in a tangential sort of way on the show "Fish Tank Kings", for example.

 

[Paul B]

I once supplied an entire store with NSW to fill all his tanks when he just started in business. At that time I had a smaller boat that I trailered. I filled garbage cans with water in the boat and backed the boat right up to his store and pumped it into his tanks.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I asked her why and besides being a pain to collect she said that there were certain water parameters that were also off that she always had to adjust.

Thanks.

FWIW, I found the salinity was fairly low in the last batch I collected in Rockport. Not sure why since there are no rivers nearby.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Randy - An alternative perspective to the downsides of a NSW collection business would be the potential cost advantage you might have for folks with large systems. My guess is that it'd be cost prohibitive to sell 5-10 gallons at a time, but I know that there are a fair number of contractors, particularly in Florida, that deliver a few hundred to a few thousand gallons of seawater at a time. They've been alluded to/pictured in a tangential sort of way on the show "Fish Tank Kings", for example.

Thanks. Yes, a small truckload at a time would be a lot more cost effective.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I once supplied an entire store with NSW to fill all his tanks when he just started in business. At that time I had a smaller boat that I trailered. I filled garbage cans with water in the boat and backed the boat right up to his store and pumped it into his tanks.

Sounds like an awful lot of work. Was it fun?

 

[Paul B]

Everything I do is fun. If it wasn't fun, why would you do it? :lmao: