Culturing Phyto

U

UprightJoe

New member
I've been thinking about dabbling in culturing phyto and assorted phyto-feeding inverts.

I have a question:

In addition to my reef tank, I keep a planted freshwater tank. As such, I always have tons of Seachem Flourish, Potassium Nitrate, Potassium Phosphate and other assorted ferts lying around. Can I use these to culture phyto or do I really need to order special phyto ferts? If I can use them, any advice as to the quantities I should use?
 
Well, I've tracked down a partial answer to my question:

http://www.garf.org/news13p2.html

It looks like the potasium nitrate and potassium phosphate are useful. I'm trying to figure out if seachem flourish would be a substitue for the IMR metals component of the recipe. The only info I could find regarding the makeup of flourish is this page:

http://www.seachem.com/products/product_pages/Flourish.html

I posted on the Seachem sponsor forum. Hopefully a Seachem rep will tell me if it's a comparable solution.

If I can use flourish for the traces, then all I need is a source of vitamins (I'm going to leave out the antibiotics at least initially). I don't have any clue where I'll find the vitamins right now. I'm assuming that most vitamins meant for human consumption have all sorts of extra stuff in them like starches, sugars, and colorings.
 
Thanks for the link. This article is actually what got me thinking about using the ferts I have lying around in the first place. :)

When I saw that he was using Miracle Grow instead of some special micro algae fert I instantly thought of all the stuff sitting under my freshwater tank. I've got everything you could possibly need or want to grow plants under there.
 
Ok, I've been crunching numbers and making some educated guesses here and there. Unless somebody comes up with a reason why this won't work, I think I'm going to try to start a culture tomorrow using DT's.

This isn't intended to be a viable long term culture - just a quick test as to whether or not I'll get a nice dark green bottle. I know that DT's isn't an ideal starter culture anymore now that it contains multiple species of phyto.

Here's what I'm going to use. Hopefully I've done my math right. I'm not very good with chemistry.

First I'm going to create three 1 liter solutions using distilled water and the following:

1) 100g Potassium Nitrate
2) 8g Potassium Phosphate
3) 80mL Flourish

Next I'm going to use two mL from each bottle to start a 2L culture.

I might hit a drug store and look at vitamins or pick up some selcon but I'm assuming the vitamins in the recipe aren't for the phyto so much as the critters that eat the phyto.
 
FYI, if I'm doing my math correctly, this should create a solution with the following numbers as far as macro nutrients:

5.58ppm Phosphate
61.3ppm Nitrate
45.97ppm Potassium

I'm not sure if there are any guidelines out there expressed in ppm but if there are, I'd like to see them so I can try to adjust the recipe to meet them. The only thing I could find was the garf article I linked to above.

One other question for the phyto farmers out there:

Is it possible to filter out some water from a culture in order to do water tests? I'd like to measure the uptake to see if the nutrients are being used in the proper ratios. I'd also like to ensure that the majority of the nutrients have been used up prior to dosing a display tank with homegrown phyto. With the water being dark green and full of phyto, I'm assuming it would be impossible match the color on a test kit.

Is there some sort of mesh you can buy with a small enough hole size to hold back phyto?
 
I wish I knew where to find a 1 micron filter sock :)

I started up a culture with the above recipe and half a cap of DT's. Either it will turn green or it won't. We'll find out...

I did do one thing differently than originally planned. I couldn't find 3 suitable containers lying around so I just mixed all three ingredients into one liter of distilled water. Hopefully they don't react with each other. I don't know enough about chemistry to know if this was a bad move or not.
 
i started mine with 5ml miracle grow and i think two caps of dt's. half cap should work just will take a while. Mine has been bubbling a little over a month and is really dark. I to would like to be able to measure the phosphate in the water but i have no idea how i can do this with the water being so dark.
 
UprightJoe, while you can use many fertilizers including miracle grow to grow phyto, it may not have the best nutritional profile.

If you were trying to raise marine fish, nothing less than guillard's f/2 formula is acceptable. With other stuff it will mater less and may not matter at all.

You should be able to track down an ingredients list somewhere to compare it to what you are currently using.

Fred
 
I found the ingredient list here:

http://www.garf.org/news13p2.html

I believe I'm using the same levels of macro nutrients as the recipe. I just happened to already have them in powdered form sitting under my freshwater aquarium.

I'm trying to use flourish to replace the IMR component of the formula. I'm not sure how well it matches though. For understandable reasons, there is a limited amount of information regarding what flourish contains. That being said, based on the information printed on the bottle, it seems to contain all of the ions from the IMR component. I'll try to do some more math with the information available to see how close the ratios of those ions are. Of course, I don't know jack about biochemistry so I don't know how much it matters what compounds those ions are assembled into. I was kind of hoping somebody with more knowledge than me would pick up on this thread and give me advice regarding whether flourish was a suitable replacement ;). <cough> <cough>

As for the nutritional value, I'll worry about that later. I'm not currently breeding fish (though I'd love it if my clowns finally spawned). If I feed this to anything, it will be dinner to some sea monkeys which will be served as a special snack to my fish.

Guillard's f/2 may be the only tried, tested, and proven formula for growing macro algae but the idea that it's the only way to do seems silly to me. If you give phyto the food it needs, it should grow. If it grows well, it should have decent nutritional value. It might not be adequate for being the sole nutrient source for fish larvae but it has to be worth something. It should at least be a nice compliment to the fish junk food sitting in my freezer and next to my aquarium.

I really want to start feeding more live food. I'm not against ordering the startup kits from Florida Aqua Farms and such but I suspect that I have everything I need in my home already :)
 
If you want to confirm the chemistry you might try the breeding formula. There are some people there who would know.

Not suggesting there is only one way, just pointing out that f2 gives optimal nutrient value to the phyto.

Fred
 
Cool. I don't want to annoy people by cross posting but maybe I can make a quick post there with a link to this thread. Hopefully that wouldn't be too annoying or break any forum rules.
 
Just shy of 72 hours... it's still not green but there is an increasing amount of particles that I have to put back into suspension by gently shaking the container. Something's growing - hopefully it's phyto :)
 
If the particles at the bottom are green and go back into suspension (not a lumps but to make the water greener) then you probably need to up your air a little.

Fred
 
Thanks much. I'll do that right now.

I wish the bottom of my two liter bottle was shaped a little differently it's got those four points on it so three of them don't get very much circulation.
 
Well, still not green...

I was adjusting the airline tubing and noticed it felt a little slimy. Some sheets of a white film came off in the water so it looks like so far I'm culturing more bacteria than phyto. :)

Maybe my DT's has kicked the bucket, maybe the ferts are no good, maybe 36 watts of 50/50 lighting isn't cutting it, or maybe the culture is just starting slow. I haven't given up on it yet but I'm not optimistic about this first bottle. I may add a little more DT's to try to kick start things. I also might go back to the formula and recheck my math.

FYI, I actually was reading an article about aquaculturing shrimp for food. I guess in large scale operations, they only use the potassium phosphate and potassium nitrate. They totally skip the IMR, vitamin, and antibiotic portions of the recipe. Of course, they probably aren't using distilled water or RO for their cultures. Their water source probably gives them the traces they need from the IMR portion.

I may start a second bottle along side this one using tap water to mix the salt and without the flourish to see what happens.
 
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