Culturing Phyto

[2639]

I'm gonna give my hand at growing some phyto. I'm going to experiment though.

I want to see how well it will culture if simply placed outside to grow within an empty, clear 2L bottle. I will have an airpump pushing air into a line that will serve to circulate the water. I hope the natural day/night cycle will be sufficient rather than having to regulate it with a timer for 16 hours and then HOPE that I can keep it in complete darkness.

Has anyone tried this or heard about this method? I'd like to know if it's worked in the past.

 

[antony1103]

Natural sun worked for me but it grew much faster with bulbs on a timer. Why do you hope you can keep it in complete darkness?

 

[2639]

Well, the only place I can put my culture is in my garage and I usually and working in there late hours ..I would need the lights to be off from about 10PM to 6AM according to the articles I've read about the process.

I'm sure those are just guidelines though.

Plus, I'm using a bottle of some phyto i recently purchased as my starter culture.

 

[Lyscer]

The only thing that would be hard to control is temperature. If the temperature gets to warm/cold the culture could crash.

 

[2639]

hmmm..i had wondered about that but I took an educated guess that since phyto occurs in pretty much all areas and even in freshwater, the temp wouldn't matter. Outdoors, the temp gets around 90 right now! In my garage, the water temp stays @ 84 ( I keep 25 gallons of makeup water in there )

What is the ideal temp? I could resort to the garage and cover the culture with a thick blanket I suppose.

 

[GreshamH]

Temp is species dependant Some like it hot, others lke it cool. What off the shelf product are you speaking about? If it's a mix, and there's nanno in it, nanno will win the culture battle

 

[2639]

I'm fairly certain it contain's nanno. I bought the culture from a fellow reefer here on ReefCentral ( FelipeBastos ... Increddible buy )

If I don't succeed with this, no biggie but I wanna give it a running shot

 

[antony1103]

I got my culture from florida aqua farms and i had the culture in my unheated/uncooled garage and it survived temp. swings from mid-30's to high 90's. I do have the culture inside a 30 gallon aquarium with the lights keeping a temp. pretty warm constantly.

 

[2639]

Exactly how do you know when it's crashed? Does it smell real bad?

 

[antony1103]

I have had one batch crash for contamination (my bad i was in a rush). Mine turned a transparent brown color and smelled really bad.