Culturing Plankton in the refugium

[saintperez]

Wanted to know if anyone has ever tried growing Planton in their refugium, all types, in a netted box. Was looking into buying a Plankton net to go out the inlet and get frash Plankton when I'm getting natural sea water for my water change. Then I thought If there's a net for it why couldn't I take all that Plankton and drop it with Net and all into my Fuge? Wouldn't in multiply in there as well?
Granted needing the right lighting condition etc. such as a 30 watt LED floodlight 24/7.

 

[billsreef]

Assuming your talking about zooplantkton, you'll also need to be adding phytoplankton to feed the critters

 

[saintperez]

Yes, and that kind of leads to the point that I think I would need to have two different cultures going. I couldn't just dump everything into one netted box because the phyto would be gone quick?

Just curious if anyone has come across an article of someone attempting this before.

 

[billsreef]

You'd need to culture the phyto in a separate container, as in separate from the tank.

 

[Subsea]

Anthony Calfo wrote several articles about macro algae refugium. He called them vegetable filters. Without any extra prep, a macro algae refugium will produce both zooplankton and certain types of phytoplankton.
Patrick