How long can you keep a starter culture in the fridge?And this is why you always split your starter culture into multiple batches. As you can see one of the three is quite contaminated and didn't grew as dense as the other two.
I will start the next batch with No. 1 or 3 depending on which looks better up close.
This will probably depend on the plankton species and overall purity. I would say a week or two if you shake it every day at least once. You will lose cells in the process so growing a new culture may take a bit longer than a fresh starter, but it should work.How long can you keep a starter culture in the fridge?And this is why you always split your starter culture into multiple batches. As you can see one of the three is quite contaminated and didn't grew as dense as the other two.
I will start the next batch with No. 1 or 3 depending on which looks better up close.
Using an excess of thiosulfate is important to ensure there is no chlorine left. It usually doesn't affect the cultures much.Did I kill them all?
So, I started my first ever culture yesterday, about 24h ago: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/growing-copepods.1163548/post-14465201. I am moving the discussion here not to messup with the original thread about pods. On the photo in that post, from the left:
All looked nice and fluffy when I went to bed. 8 hours later, today morning (I am in AU) all 3 cultures were crashed. Tetra and Phaeo were all on the bottom, Nanno was holding a tiny bit better, but still almost all cells on the bottom. Air was pumping, light was on (continuous light). I hopelessly swirled the bottles and managed to resuspend all 3 cultures. All were showing clumps. Two hours later I repeated the swirling, clumps disappeared, looking better. I repeated swirling once or twice more through the day.
- Tetraselmis
- Phaeodactylum (a diatom)
- Nannochloropsis
Now, after approx 4h since last stirring Nano actually looks almost fine. I would be proud, if I did not see it on the bottom in the morning. Tetra show gradient - more cells close to the bottom, some on the bottom. Phaeo looks the worst - clear colour gradient, lots of cells on the bottom, clumps visible during swirling. Clumps dropped back to the bottom after swirling stopped. This is how the cultures look 20 mins after last stirring:
All show some clumps, Tetra more than Nano (Nano on the right), Phaeo (in the middle) show most clumps. But still... some cells seem to be suspended. Maybe they make it? Anything I can do to help them? Or, it's over and I am abusing the corpse?
In the morning, I swallowed my pride and consulted The Wife. She is a real-deal wet-lab rat, not a dry-lab nerd like me. Plus converting honey into mead is her hobby. She scorched me for not following @EnterName autoclave advise, but using some chlorine crap from supermarket, and she questioned my integrity when I admitted to not temperature acclimating the fridge-stored cultures first. Yeah. All deserved. (I neutralized the chlorine with sodium thiosulfate, confirmed 0 with a chlorine water test strip. I have likely added more thiosulfate than it was needed.)
I wonder if I should give them dark time tonight, or not? Should I move them away from the light to lower the exposure and the temperature?
In theory you can just add more sterilized water with fertilizer, but I prefer to start with clean and sterile bottles. As most people don't work perfectly sterile and don't buy expensive sterile cultures, there will always be some growth on the glass over time. Using clean bottles instead of letting this stuff grow helps to keep the culture stable and reduces the amount of contaminants.Great writeup and a thank you for helping me get me started with Nannochlorpsis.
Now I have a question that I can't seem to find an answer to. If you start with larger container(s) and when the batch has matured can you simply add more salt water and another dose of F2 then continue on?
I was thinking of getting the salt water ready and letting sit in the same room until the temperature matches then doing this until the quantity is large enough to start feeding my copepods without worrying about running out and having to reorder another starter.
For info I started 2 days ago and the 50ML starter I bought was very light green. After starting with 500ML of salt water @1.023 and dividing the starter in half it was almost clear and I was a little worried but both 1 gallon tanks are now darker than what I started with so I am hopeful I can continue this by adding another 500ML and F2 each week until they are almost full.
Thanks!
Left (Tetra) looks okay, middle looks bad, right (Nanno) looks good.Thanks!
This is how the cultures look today morning without any swirling. So, maybe there is hope?
Do they look promising? The diatom looks the worst. Would you decent the cultures to remove the dead cells at the bottom, or just keep going as is?
Phytoplankton is (in my opinion) "advanced" reefing
Interesting so the stuff i bought seachem pytoplankton is garbage basically. Lol im gonna have to save this just in case. I would like to feed them good stuff too.lol how long does it take to make? Is it worth it ? If it makes the grow faster than I can see it. But if its just to save money then hell I dont wasted over 10 grand building this tank im not sweating buying food. Also does it help keep water cleaner vs reef roids. I will have copopods for my manderin though.Phytoplankton is (in my opinion) "advanced" reefing
It's one of many ways to feed corals, but it's certainly neither the easiest, nor the cheapest. You can buy bottled phytoplankton if you don't want to culture it yourself, or you simply go with powdered food like Reef Roids, etc.
Phytoplankton becomes important once you want to grow Zooplankton like Copepods or you are planning to breed fish/shrimp/etc. I do it mostly for fun and to offer my corals some natural living food in contrast to the stuff you buy from the shelf.
I can say with great confidence that Randy Holmes-Farley does not think highly of Seachem products. He's been very public about that. Here's just three times he's mentioned not trusting Seachem products:
Thank's for letting me know!
For sure, but I know you like to follow the chem sub-forum, and I know how Randy feels about Seachem in general
Thanks for the breakdown. I have a 13.5 evo tank with about 24 corals and 2 clown and goby with some snails but im having trouble keeping phosphate down. I have a waterbox 110.4 marine x on the way actually wil be here this month finally so hoping its just the little tank and phosphate will be easy to keep down in bigger. I do buy alot of coral foods. I have everything they say is the best. So alot of crap. Been backing down on feeding lately
Wait who the hell is randy ? lol so I shouldn't use seachem stuff
Randy Holmes-Farley. Just look him up
If your phosphate is elevated, try using granular ferric oxide (GFO) and cut back on coral feeding, especially broadcast feeding. There's an ongoing equilibrium reaction in your tank: phosphate binds to the calcium carbonate in your rocks and substrate, and also dissolves back out of it depending on conditions. When you do a water change and lower the dissolved phosphate level, that equilibrium shifts against you: some of the phosphate bound in the rock and substrate dissolves back into the water, which can make it seem like the water change barely helped. This is why water changes alone are an inefficient way to deal with high phosphate. Adsorbing media like GFO works better because it removes phosphate directly rather than relying on that equilibrium. There are other adsorbers, but they tend to be either less effective or are prone to leaching aluminum into your tank, which isn't something you want.
Ahh that explains alot. I been doing 20 percent watwe chamges at least 3 times a week but I can't seem to get it down. I have gha in some spots not alot . I was thinking it was because I wasn't vacuuming the sand when I did it. The other day I put fresh carbon and now my nitrates are 0 and phosphate is .26 with hanna checker. Gonna try the gfo . I lost a duncan . 1 of my torches and my poor goni has shrunk so small butstill hanging in there. All my other levels are fine other than ph seems to stay at 8 or 8.1
