Can phytoplankton be cultured in fresh water?

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In Memoriam
Hiya, a few mins ago I accidently poured my phytoplankton into bottles of tap water, was wondering if I messed up again, lol.
 
I'm going to say yes. If I were you, I would split it in two cultures. Leave one in the fresh water, and add some salt and/or water to the other to bring up the salinity.
 
I'm using this brand

IMG_1126.jpg
 
I think this species is very euryhaline, which means that it does well in a variety of salinities. But the initial osmotic shock of a rapid salinity change does not bode well for the culture. It's good that you added salt, but depending on how much you added, that could have been two large shocks in a row, so I hope you didn't bring the salinity quickly back up to seawater. Slow salinity changes are fairly easily handled by most phytoplankton.
 
I want to use it to breed more copepods, last time I measure my salinity after adding in the salt it was at like 1.30+
 
Update

I forgot to mention both of my previous cultures with 1.030+ salinity crash, lol and now I'm culturing them @ 1.019, it's been going ok for the past 3 days.
 
nannochloropsis is generally a poor choice for copepods. I could be wrong, but Isocrysis would probably be a better phyto to use. Each phyto has different concentrations of protein, fats, DHAs, etc. Phyto is not the best choice to use, but probably the easiest to culture.
 
nannochloropsis is generally a poor choice for copepods. I could be wrong, but Isocrysis would probably be a better phyto to use. Each phyto has different concentrations of protein, fats, DHAs, etc. Phyto is not the best choice to use, but probably the easiest to culture.


DHA is a fatty acid so no need to list it and fats :)

Phytoplankton is the best choice to grow copepods with what data is available at the moment. Nanno is not a good choice to grow copepods on, wait, I said this all ready :lol: A Diatom would do much more for growing copepods.
 
Gresham, any particular diatom? Could similar results be seen from a flagellate like T-Iso or tetraselmis?
 
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