Culturing your own Phytoplankton

[shanekennedy]

it sounds like you think the non-professionals are incompetent. would you suggest purchasing ready-made saltwater? a lot of members have high reguards for your comments & you're discouraging them for learning & becoming self-profecient.

i'm not trying to start an argument here, just offering another opinion.

i've been let down by too many "professionals", not just in the reefers world. i don't believe in paying for anything i can do myself.

 

[jgreen1025]

I'd also like to add my thanks to both Randy Reed and Dennis Tagarin (and, of course, Anthony) for all the helpful comments here. As much as I'd really like to start my own phyto cultures, I just don't have the time, especially to do it right. Add to that the problem that my wife WILL NOT be happy if I try, and I've decided that for the time being, at least, I'm going to try these products. The biggest problem with that, however, is that they're not always stocked by my local stores (which is one reason I'd considered a home culture, the other naturally being cost), so hopefully, I can find one or the other when needed. (Supposedly, my local store in Canoga Park has both, so we'll see...)

One question, however - the product I most often find for sale is Bio-Life, which needs to be kept in the freezer. Is this stuff LIVE phyto? It certainly seemed better than the Phyto-Plex I've been using recently. Thanks for your help.

John G.

 

[Anthony Calfo]

shanekennedy... I think you would have a different opinion if you visited enough (impressive) facilities and (most importantly) read the comparative analysis (the nutritive value of some home phyto is just awful).

I used to think as you did ("how different could it be?), but I've see the light (green) now

As for the seawater analogy... bunk. Natural seawater is not ideal or recommended IMO. Unprocessed, it is unsuitable for closed aquarium systems (natural plankters crashing even if not including pathogenic organisms... mineral inconsistencies over time/seasons... pollution risk for drawing it off of populated coasts, etc).

And so... synthetic sea salts are highly processed, quality controlled and almost idiot proof. The user only adds water and it mixes up the same for everyone. This is not the same for home grown phyto culture ingredients... there is no standardization:

... no standard for feed/fertilizer (folks have to find/make their own)... the quality of light varies by user and over time (as lamps age, etc... really... how many folks are testing their culture lamps with a PAR meter, etc)... plus the influence of temperature (that most folks are unaware of), etc..

Comparisons are fine/helpful... but lets compare apples to apples here.

As far as your perception that I think "non-professionals" are incompetent here... I really don't see how you reckon that. For starters... I don't think I'm incompetent... and I'm in the same boat (hobbyist) as you are.

Read above (posts)... this is only about DIY versus commercial being tedious, expensive (to produce high quality) and inconvenient. Lab cultured/commercial phyto is usually very different (better) than home phyto. Period.

Home grown is still useful (quite so).

 

[seafarm]

Hi John,

I think you are referring to Bio-Planton from Liquid Life. That is a frozen product and has a very long shelf life. It is not live, but it is an excellent feed.

Hi Shanekennedy,

I'm having a hard time understanding how you think my comments could be seen as critical. I pointed out that anybody can grow algae, its just time consuming. If you have a lot of time on your hands - by all means learn about growing microalgae, it is fun to grow.

There is no question that shipping direct to you is expensive. Most of the other algae suppliers won't even ship direct - they only sell through stores. We prefer that you purchase from your local store so you don't have the shipping cost, but also give the option of direct shipments. And my calculations might be off a bit for the amount of time to maintain your cultures, but I suspect if you try to maintain 4 different algae species it will take a bit more time than 10 minutes per week.

Or maybe I need to hire you to come grow algae for me

 

[Fredfish]

This thread just keeps getting better.

Anthony, I count 7 algaes and numbers in sets of 6. Not sure how to match up the numbers with the algae species.

Now, my .02 worth...

When I started reading this thread I was in the "its easy to do so do it at home camp". However, as I have begun to educate myself for may attempts to raise seahorses I have begun to appreciate how complicated nutrition is.

I think that it depends entirely on what you are trying to do whether or not you culture your own. If you are an average reefer who wants to encourage a little more zooplankton for suplemental food for corals and grow a few other interesting inverts, home cultured can work just fine. A lot of things seem to be able to survive in reasonable numbers on just nano.

If you are like those who want to breed and raise things, life gets more complicated. Not all algaes have the same contents. Not all zooplankton have the same nutrient values. Different zooplankton feed on different size food particles...

For instance, nanochloropsis is a poor choice if you want to grow a lot of copepods. It is on the small size for a food item and it has an extremely thick and tough outer membrane. Not very digestible for copepods. Your culture will grow, but it will not bloom the way you need it to.

It gets even more complicated because some copepods can synthesize their own HUFFAs from other fatty acids and some can't. Even worse, brine shrimp are a nutrient vacume. They are only as good as what you put into them.

For me, a good commercial multi species product will be a savior (if I can find it locally )

By the way, good commercial grade F2 formulations specifically for growing phytoplankton are readily available for cheap. I am puzzled why home cultures are such poor quality.

You've got bullet proof salt, f2, lighting products, and algae (nano) available. The only difficult to control variable is temperature and only in the summer.

Fred

 

[jgreen1025]

For instance, nanochloropsis is a poor choice if you want to grow a lot of copepods. It is on the small size for a food item and it has an extremely thick and tough outer membrane. Not very digestible for copepods. Your culture will grow, but it will not bloom the way you need it to.

It gets even more complicated because some copepods can synthesize their own HUFFAs from other fatty acids and some can't. Even worse, brine shrimp are a nutrient vacume. They are only as good as what you put into them.

So, if I want to not only feed my feather dusters and sponges, but also encourage zooplankton populations to increase, what's my best course of action? What about if I want to just raise the occasional batch of brine shrimp - what can I feed them that will make them nutritious for my fish? Will they eat the Phyto-Plex?

John G.

 

[Triterium]

Thanks for the info Mr. Reed I definately agree that most people would be better off buying a quality phytoplankon istead of producing a low-cell-density, nutrient-rich additive for thier tank. I actually use several gallons a day culturing zooplankon so growing my own is a good alternative

Do you have any advice on keeping axenic cultures at home?

Also, what type of lighting do you use in your facility? I use 5 gallon carboys and was thinking about switching to VHO (6500K).

 

[seafarm]

I agreed with John - Nanno is a great feed for rotifers and some other filter feeders will consume it, but it too small and too tough for many others. Iso/Pav are great for reef tanks, not only because they have the missing nutritional component, but also because they are larger (4-7 microns, nanno is 1) and they have thin membrane barriers instead of tough cell walls so they are easily consumable by almost all reef tank filter feeders.

There are several products on the market that contain Isochrysis and / or Pavlova. If you do a google search on those words you will easily find them.

Hopefully I said that generically enough so I don't get in trouble with the Reef Central Police

 

[Anthony Calfo]

I just want to say that I'm so glad the thread has been productive and dynamic.

Good job to all... lets keep it going (and friendly).

 

[seafarm]

We have a 10 acre greenhouse facility for growing marine microalgae so we use natural sunlight. You can see a picture of our site at http://www.reed-mariculture.com/images/farm.jpg.

Axenic (100% bacteria free) cultures are almost impossible to maintain outside of a sterile lab. They also don't grow well since algae grows MUCH better in the presence of good bacteria like nitrifying bacteria.

I suspect what you really want is just a good clean culture. I would recommend getting that from CCMP (seen earlier in this thread).

That being said, I would also suggest that you do the numbers and see if a commercial product is cheaper. I know you said you are using gallons per day, but some of the super-concentrates are still cost effective. There is a product available that condenses 3600 liters (950 gallons) of dense algae culture into 1 liter of super-concentrate, so if you are using 5 gallons per day that would last you for 6.5 months.

 

[seafarm]

Anthony,

My sincere apology if you took any offense to the RC Police jest. As a product manufacturer I'm still learning how much I can and can't say in these forums without it seeming too commercial and making people unhappy. I was trying to make fun of myself, not you.

Randy

 

[Anthony Calfo]

[a reference to a PM/edits]

no worries. I'm admittedly tight/tidy if not outright strict about keeping my forum friendly and respectful (I just need someone to moderate me sometimes when I am tired and grumpy on the 100th em/pm or post of the day ).

All posts are welcome... I just like to see kid gloves on jabs and jests at large. The rough riders can find their way to the lounge instead

 

[Triterium]

Wow that is a huge greenhouse! I actually have a greenhouse that has a small 400 gallon system. I was thinking about growing my culutres in 40+ gallon cylindrical containers using natural sunlight. In a couple weeks i'll be doing rotifer cultures in 55 gallon tanks so i'll need a lot of microalgae.

I was actually considering getting a start from CCMP but didnt wat to spend $100+ on a culture. Ive had good success with $8 starts from FAFUSA and can keep a nice dark culture for a couple months.

Mr. Reed, what is the cell desity of the super-concentrated algae? If you condesned 950 gallons of dense phytoplankton culture, i would think you would end up with a paste. Theoretically, if the cell integrity were strong, you could condense over 13,000 gallons of nannochloropsis (assuming 1 micron diameter) into a single liter (hmm.. i hope my math is correct). But that doesn't really leave room for much water.

edit> thats also assuming 20million cells/ml

 

[TheDeepSandBed]

Hi everyone...this thread is better than I ever could have imagined when I first threw my ideas out there. Thanks for everyone and thier ideas. God I love RC!!! (maybe even enough to donate some money ). Anyway, I thought I would give a brief update.

My phyto cultures are going quite well. I just read the idea of decanting the cultures and doing freshwater rinses and I think I am going to try that this weekend. As for time investment, I spend about 30secs a day (if that) tending to the cultures and about 10 minutes once every two weeks to change my cultures. I did however have a crash in my rotifer culture...couldn't quite figure out why (I dont think they liked the phytoplex i fed them until I got my cultures up to speed). But now have rebounded nicely and are growing once again. Once again many thanks to all for this great thread.

BTW any word on trying to keep a culture on gelatin, I know someone was going to look into that?

 

[seafarm]

Hi Triterium,

Our super-concentrates are sold to commercial fish hatcheries for growing rotifers and for greenwater technique. The cell count on the Nanno is 68 billion cells per ml. Good guess - that comes from is 3600 liter of algae @ 19 million cells per ml.

Rotifers grow MUCH better on algae concentrates than live algae, especially for high density systems (over 1,000 per ml). The main reason is because you have to add so much live algae to the system so you are constantly dumping in cold algae water into a warm rotifer culture, and that puts them into "shock" for a few hours. Also, rotifers have to eat every 4 hours so its hard to add enough live algae to keep the tank green between feedings. There is a lot of information about how to culture rotifers at www.Rotifer.com.

Randy

 

[Triterium]

That sounds like a wonderful product Randy! How do you manage to get it that concentrated without causing significant damage to the cells. My calculations tell me that you are going to run into some serious problems reaching that density if the cells are bigger than 2.5 microns in diameter.

 

[seafarm]

There are several aspects to getting it that concentrated. First you can only do with with super-strong algae like Nanno and Tet. You will notice all of our other brown algae aquaculture products are only 9% dry weight, not 18%. Second you have to have specially designed centrifuges that introduce the algae to the bowl gradually, not 0 to 6000 gravities all at once. Our machines are fairly huge - several tons each. When the Nanno is harvested from the bowl for our aquaculture products (non-live products) it looks like green clay and we cut it with knives to seperate it out.

 

[bunsenburner]

Anybody know the g forces phytoplankton will tolerate during harvesting? Just curious of the values for a few commonly discussed species.

I too spend very little time on my cultures. Perhaps an hour a week. Someday I may go the commercial route since the "experts" probably grow a better quality product but for now it is part of what I enjoy doing with my free time.

As many have stated, this is a very interesting thred with loads of information.

 

[Luis A M]

well... that was fast: Mr Tagrin from DT's replied promtly to a request for information.

his comments are pasted below here.



At DT's Plankton Farm; we use advanced cell separation technology that was developed to harvest live, undamaged cells. This is a long, tedious, and expensive process. This same process is used to wash the cells by repeatedly adding and extracting clean saltwater. This product was developed specifically for use in the closed system environment of reef aquariums.

In contrast, centrifuging phytoplankton is a process used by some companies to make algae paste for commercial aquaculture. This process was not designed to harvest live cells and in fact, the cells are scraped out like clay. This method is fast and cheap, but it damages a large percentage of cells. Several companies are purchasing these algal pastes as frozen concentrated phytoplankton to use as ingredients in their marine aquariums
products.

.

Randy,see what DT thinks of centrifugation
I canÃ"šÃ‚´t imagine other cell separation technique.Precipitation could work for larger heavy cells but not for NAN.
Anyway,I use IA and never found damaged cells.
I also culture six algae for special works.Calanoid pods donÃ"šÃ‚´t seem to enjoy pastes.And living outside USA I can only bring the long term storage algae,NAN and TET.
A factor not mentioned here is that the highest nutritional composition is obtained by harvesting in the log.growth phase...

 

[seafarm]

I understand why Dennis has to make comments like that - otherwise he has no way to differentiate his products. But unfortunately his "facts" are not correct. Nanno is the only algae that we concentrate to the "clay" level and none of the cells are damaged at this concentration - Nanno is just too tough. Our other algae are concentrated at far lower G's to a thick liquid. They also come out whole and intact.

The algae that we concentrate for our "Live" product which is sold into the aquarium industry is concentrated using a different method that we have developed. I'm not going to reveal how we do this because it is a trade secret that we don't want to become publically known. I know everybody hates "secrets", but sometimes they are necessary - sorry!

There is a lot of talk about the aquarium industry wanting the highest quality microalgae possible to feed their filter feeders. But I can tell you that my commercial aquaculture customers demand far higher quality from their products than this market.

Commercial hatcheries go through extensive product testing before they will bring in new products because this is their livelihood, and a product that doesn't perform or possibly disrupts a hatchery threatens that entire business.

The core of our business is selling to commercial hatcheries in 67 countries around the world. Revenues from our aquarium products represents about 2% of our total sales. None of the other marine microalgae producers in the United States sell to commercial hatcheries so they have not had to go through the intense scrutiny our products have.

So it's silly for Dennis to say we are selling a "damaged" product to the commercial hatcheries. If his products were better then he would be selling to the professionals, not us.