hey lou... i've been cultivating for a few years now. i currently have nannochloropsis as my 'salt water' species. in the past i've cultivated tetra, duna and iso. i use faf micro algae grow... i found it's the best for consistency. i use 1 drop fert per 100ml of water,....this ratio never fails me. i've used fw plant ferts in the passed... some work, some don't. get a good phyto fert for reliability. you can feed freshly fertilized phyto to your tank, but i don't recommend it... five days from fertilizing works for me. i generally work out of one bottle for the week, with a few brewing on the side. when i cut, i cut half and half... half phyto, half fresh fertilized water. then light it up til next week. it's a good idea to throw a few small bottles, jars of phyto into the fridge, just in case of crashes. especially if you're playing with alternative fertilizers.
yes you can use bottled live phyto...but not all of them will work... one of my lfs has a bottled brand that i played with a few times and it doesn't work... the phyto settles out, and i think there's something else in there with it. disks work the best... if you're a diy kinda guy, hit your local river, pond, puddle... take some water and fertilize it, put it under light and see what happens. i've done it a few times and come up with some differing species.
cheap leds, the newer kind that screw into light bulb sockets are what i'm using now. currently a 6 watt par 20 from some dollar store.
i have a few cultures of freshwater phytos that i've acquired from local sources. one i suspect is actually nanno...i've flipped it to saltwater, and it looks like nanno under the microscope... but i'm not exactly sure.
i just pulled some out of a rain bucket last week and have it greening up... not sure of the species though.
i dose freshwater phytos into my display as top up water. about four ounces daily for my four gallon display...not dense culture.
as for set up.... i use two litre pop bottles, swirl the bottles daily... don't bother wasting energy on air to circulate the culture... daily swirling is all you need. during the summer months, and winter too sometimes, i keep the bottles on a window sill. make sure there's no lid on the bottle. if you must have a lid on it, drill a hole, and insert an inch of rigid air line for pouring. you don't need to make the culture dense for use. you'll find you don't need it.
hope this helps you out lou.
