Who doesn't remove Clams when feeding?

[manderx]

that's what i figured, which is why i stopped doing it. why spend so friggin much on DTs if it's just going to puke it up. i was hoping to start an Iso culture soon to see if that did any better.

 

[Turtlesteve]

I feed my tank 1 quart of cultured phyto per day (90 gallon tank). It's enough to make the whole tank look green, so i don't bother with bowl-feeding. The water is always crystal clear again after about 2 hours and i'm growing all kinds of sponges and tube worms in addition to the clams. I have also recently found three small spondylus sp. thorny oysters in my tank that are growing as fast as the clams.

 

[justletmein]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

For the folks that feed the tank only, how much do you feed your tank and what's the tank size? I've got some nanochloropsis cultures started and plan on feeding the tank about 1.5 liters per day.

 

[SurferStevo]

Justletmein - that is A LOT of phyto. I thought I was over doing it at 2L per week on a 60g. But it took me about 9 months to ramp it up to that level.

 

[ADS]

Justletmein-
I would not recommend that much to start. You'll get an algae bloom. It really depends on the concentration of your culture. Lets say your culture is 10mil cell/ml of Nannochloropsis. At 1.5L/day in 125g tank that's about 25000cell/ml of tank water.
that's alot. Heavy feeding is about 10000cell/ml.
I would recommend about 10cc of phyto every 3 days to start w/ your tank and increase as necessary. This is a low concentration(about <200cell/ml) but better to under than overdose.
When culturing phytoplankton there is always culture wasted especially for small systems. Adam

 

[Turtlesteve]

How does one measure the cell concentration of the phyto? As stated earlier i feed about 1 quart per day but i have no idea how much this really is, especially since my phyto culture is set up a little differently. I have ramped up to about 1.5 times the dosage of micro algae grow stated for f/2 level. I have four 2L bottles that i cycle, so the algae only has four days to grow but i leave about 1/4 to 1/3 of the original culture in the bottle. At one point i did the math associated with this and calculated that the end cell count for this method was comparable to using a 7 day cycle with only a small amount to initiate the culture.

 

[justletmein]

No worries, I've been dumping an absolute ton of Tahitian Blend, DT's, and Instant Algae in the tank. I'm pretty sure that the 1.5 liters of home brew is actually ramping down. I started the culture because I was tired of spending so much money on phyto

 

[ADS]

Everybody's system is different. Some can take high bioload depending on maturity and filtration.
To calculate cells/ml you need to be able estimate your culture density. FAF has a dipstick or you can use a cell counter. Once you obtain a cell density per ml of culture multiply by the volume to be added.
Then divide by tank volume in ml to get cell/ml/tank volume.
Example- 10 mil cell/ml x 1500ml(1.5L)= 1.5 billion cells
1.5 billion cells/ 600000ml(125g tank)=25000 cell/ml of
phytoplankton
Adam

 

[ADS]

Turtlesteve-
My suggestion would be to cut back on the F2 fertilizer if you're using that much phyto. Also try to harvest in the exponential phase of growth to elimate excess fertilizer going into your tank.
Adam