growing my own Phytoplankton

[hapylilgoldfish]

I bubble CO2 into a well lit Five gallon bucket of water (1.024 specific gravity; 8.2 Ph) ive seeded it with live phytoplankton. the culture seems to be all right for a period of time but after two weeks the culture crashes. Any suggetions?

 

[JohnL]

Have you seen the article about growing phytoplankton in www.reefkeeping.com ?

 

[pnosko]

And since John forgot,

[welcome]

 

[kmk2307]

Howdy hapylilgoldfish,
What are you using as your live phytoplankton source? The article John was talking about can be found here. Another article that I found quite informative can be found here.

I suspect that either they phytoplankton is being contaminated with an organisms that eats it or is running out of nutrients. Do you ever put something that has water from your display reef in it? It's possible organims like rotifers or copepods are getting into your culture. Do you see other organisms in the crashed culture? If not, I'm guessing that they are running out of nutrients. What do you feed them, how much of it, and how often?

Hope this helps (HTH),
Kevin

 

[JohnL]

And since John forgot,

Oops... sorry about that

 

[kmk2307]

happylilgolfish,
Have you figured your problem out yet? If not, please post the answers to the questions I asked and maybe I or someone else will be able to help you.

Kevin