I am not currently keeping plankton cultures so I don't have current records with me. I will post some information based on memory, but please don't take it as gospel. Things can vary based on your approach, your water, your nutrients, your lighting, and even the water temperature. What works for you may not work for the next person.
Here are some general pointers.
First, make sure to keep your cultures separate. Be very careful to keep your zooplankton cultures separate from your phytoplankton cultures - all it takes is the smallest amount of zooplankton to 'infect' a phytoplankton culture. Unless you want to spend a lot of time sterilizing stuff, keep your zoo and phyto bottles separate. Only move cultures from your phyto bottle to the zoo bottles - never in reverse. This idea of keeping cultures separate includes the use of plankton strainers, aerator hose, etc. If you take an aerator from a zooplankton bottle and drop it in a phyto bottle, say 'goodbye' to your phyto culture.
You will always want more phytoplankton than zoo plankton. Normally I kept four times as many phyto as zoo cultures going. Don't run out of phytoplankton or your zoo cultures will crash and you will have to start all over.
Phyto cultures have a limited life of a week or two (max) once they mature. Use the phyto up and start new cultures before they crash. Once a phyto culture crashes, if you leave it alone, it will eventually 'bloom' again, and will have another culture of phyto, but the second generation will be much less dense than the first. It is best just to split the culture and start daughter cultures before the phyto crashes in the first place.
Zoo cultures, once mature, can live quite a while as long as you feed them and split them (i.e. reduce the population). Generally I would still start totally new zoo cultures once every month just to be safe.
Aeration should be minimal. Turn down the aeration as low as possible so that if you cut it any more the bubbles would stop altogether. I had my aeration set so low that small bubbles would come up about once every second - 'pop... pop... pop... pop'. You should NOT be able to hear any bubbles coming from your planton cultures they should be set so low. In your zoo bottles you should be able to see the plankton gently floating about - not tumbling around in violent water currents.
Not sure how relevant temperature is. I kept my cultures at room temperature, which got hotter or colder depending upon the season (in Chicago). Within this range, I did not see any impact on phyto or zoo cultures.
Lighting needs to be moderate for phyto cultures, but nothing special. You can grow phyto with cool white flourescent bulbs (right next to the phyto bottles) or with strong natural light through a window. Zoo cultures have no lighting requirements specifically, but when you are starting new zoo cultures you will need lighting for the bottles, since most of the bottle will be phytoplankton anyway. Bottom line, it is best to keep both cultures under moderate lighting.
When you get your phytoplankton disks from the supplier, don't skimp on the first culture. Don't, for example, try to cut the disk into ten pieces to start ten cultures at once. At most, cut the disk in half to start two cultures. Cultures off disks will take a while to get going - don't panic. Once they mature you can cut them four ways each to have a total of eight cultures going if you want, and you will be in better shape than if you tried to start eight from scratch. By 'cutting' a culture, I mean taking one eighth of the culture, pouring it into a new phyto bottle, and topping it off with your base phyto nutrient mix - it is not that complicated.
With your zoo cultures, you will want to constantly cut them to keep them from crashing. Normally I would feed 1/4 - 1/2 bottle each day (in total) from alternating cultures (for anemone fish larvae). A lot depends on the density of the zoo culture, the number of fish larvae, the size of your rearing tank (mine was a 5 gallon), etc. To cut the zoo culture, I would pour out the appropriate amount into my plankton strainer (letting the waste liquid pour into a drain), and I would carefully top off the zoo culture with fresh phyto plankton. I would then rinse the zoo plankton (still in the strainer) with a little fresh aquarium water to rinse any extra nutrients away before I added the zoo plankton to the grow out tank.
Don't forget funnels - you'll use them a lot
Get a funnel for phyto cultures and a different one for zoo cultures. Get rigid airline tubing to aerate the cultures - cut it to fit the depth of the two liter bottles. You do not need airstones, and I would recommend not using them (they are hard to keep sanitized).
That's about it for now off the top of my head. I hope this helps.
