Automating Phyto and Rotifer setup

[hmmmmm]

Just looking for some ideas, im about to purchase a phyto reactor and am looking into breeding rotifers as well. Ive seen a lot of setups but most consist or bottles and buckets. Tried and true method but i like automating stuff so im thinking what could make this easier on the maintenance side.

Using a bunch of dosing pumps should make this possible i think. Ive read cleaning the lines is annoying but wy not use a system with multiple pump where you dose with one, and use another on the same line to clean the lines? Dosing pump are cheap nowadays and you dont need anything fancy. Some RODI in the reactors is not an issue, need to top of anyway.

Pump up water from the tank into the phyto reactor. Pump out the phyto into the tank to feed fish/corals and also into the rotifer reactor. Extra pumps for cleaning the lines afterwards.
ATO for both. Pump out the rotifers with another pump. Just need something to automate the filter proces? Or maybe just pump the rotifers to the drain and only filter them out when needed?

 

[Big G]

Bump

 

[Surfzone]

I'm not too sure what you are trying to accomplish in the end with this. Are you trying to feed fish larvae, a reef, or are you doing this just to do it?

 

[hmmmmm]

Are you trying to feed fish larvae, a reef, or are you doing this just to do it?

All of the above ;Smuggrin
With you asking this question I've just realised something about myself. I used to be a gadget freak, always looking for the latest phone, laptop etc. At some point I stopped with that nonsense. Now I'm using a Chinese realme phone, and a laptop from work, got a cheap tv etc. I thought I was done with that stuff, now I realize I'm doing the same thing but with fish stuff.. I've always like the idea of feeding live foods, now I've bought a 250 dollar reactor, were a plastic bottle would do the same thing. Got multiple controllers and fancy dosing pump while my Chinese dosere were working perfectly fine.. Guess some things will never change

Anyway, as for an actual awnser;
-I would like to breed clown fish to make a clown\anemone tank at some point. This is a long time away but I need to learn about it before trying that.
-Feeding the reef and frag tank with natural food instead of buying all.sort of miracle powders, who doesn't want that?
-I like trying stuff, learning new things, automating these systems and figuring them out is fun for me. I play around with wired and wireless systems and server rooms in care facilities as a job, and then I'm building a house, a racing bike and aquariums when I get home. If I'm not thinking of tech of building things I get depressed quickly

 

[Andy Macro]

Was thinking the same as you, because I've got my eyes in non photosynthetic corals, and I don't want to be a slave to their feeding. I want to try making one that is gravity fed, with self priming lines (how urinals work) so that a specific amount of water passes from one stage to the next in intervals... this way I don't have to worry much about cleaning the lines and more electric equipment.

 

[KimG]

It can be done. A few years back for my work I build a small automatic phobioreactor. It was made of acrilyc for the looks, I believe it was 10 litters. It had light 24h and aeration to keep the algae mixes. Once a day, 2 litters of new water mixed with media were added and the algae overflowed. This is not ideal since you are also removing media at the same time, but for the purpose it worked well. It ran for about 30 days without any input from me. You could just use a dosing pump to take algae out and another one to put water and media in. But you need to make sure they add and remove the same exact amounts.

Technically, you could do the same for the rotifers (and even have the outflow of the algae feed the rotifers directly).
A few notes however.
Cultures of phytoplankton will eventually crash if you run them continuously, so I would probably have two of each reactor, so you can start a new culture every few weeks. Also, rotifer production can be a bit messy and the water and tank will need to be cleaned regularly.

If you have more questions, just ask.

 

[hmmmmm]

It can be done. It had light 24h and aeration to keep the algae mixes. Once a day, 2 litters of new water mixed with media were added and the algae overflowed. This is not ideal since you are also removing media at the same time, but for the purpose it worked well. It ran for about 30 days without any input from me.

Technically, you could do the same for the rotifers (and even have the outflow of the algae feed the rotifers directly).
A few notes however.
Cultures of phytoplankton will eventually crash if you run them continuously, so I would probably have two of each reactor, so you can start a new culture every few weeks. Also, rotifer production can be a bit messy and the water and tank will need to be cleaned regularly.

If you have more questions, just ask.

Thanks for the input! So many questions ;Smuggrin

- Since most here won't need liters of the stuff would it make sense to lower the amount\time of light? Maybe run one hour on, one hour off? Just thinking about slowing it down to increase the time before it crashes.

- Regarding the crashes, why does it crash? Is it a nutrient problem?

- Cleaning the reactor is the biggest issue with this IMHO. The one I got is a couple hundred bucks, then I would need another one for the rotifers, and a complete backup set.. I don't mind spending money on a hobby but that is out of reach for most people. Did you clean it within those 30 days or only after the experiment?

- You were changing 20% a day, or diluting i should say. Did you add anything on a daily basis or just let it run untill the color started to change? I'm trying to figure out if there is a 'best' amount to change out a day, so let's say a percentage for the water and an amount of nutrients to add. Was this a trial and error affair of were the numbers based on known information?

Thanks for taking the time, I think making this easier would benefit a lot of reefers

 

[KimG]

Thanks for the input! So many questions ;Smuggrin

- Since most here won't need liters of the stuff would it make sense to lower the amount\time of light? Maybe run one hour on, one hour off? Just thinking about slowing it down to increase the time before it crashes.

- Regarding the crashes, why does it crash? Is it a nutrient problem?

- Cleaning the reactor is the biggest issue with this IMHO. The one I got is a couple hundred bucks, then I would need another one for the rotifers, and a complete backup set.. I don't mind spending money on a hobby but that is out of reach for most people. Did you clean it within those 30 days or only after the experiment?

- You were changing 20% a day, or diluting i should say. Did you add anything on a daily basis or just let it run untill the color started to change? I'm trying to figure out if there is a 'best' amount to change out a day, so let's say a percentage for the water and an amount of nutrients to add. Was this a trial and error affair of were the numbers based on known information?

Thanks for taking the time, I think making this easier would benefit a lot of reefers

You are welcome glad to help.

You could run the phyto like a ATS or a refugium and run less hours a day. I assume that will slow the growth at bit, but I have never tried it (always used light 24/7).

The crash are caused by different problems. If things are not completely sterile, you normally end up getting cilliates or other organisms that can pray on the algae. Dirt will also build inside the reactor (from decaying algae for example) and over time which can lead to a crash. Finally, one important issue is pH. Depending on just how concentrated you get the algae you may need co2 to keep ph in check. Normally not a problem unless you really push the cultures.
It is in theory possible to run bioreactors for very long periods, but it requires proper design and operation (not my field).
Nutrients are normally not a problem as you added with the new water whenever you harvest phyto.

No, I did not touch it for the 30 days. You could run only one and when you think is getting time to restart, you collect some algae, empty the reactor, clean and restart. The problem is that you want to keep the culture clean so you want to transfer just a small amount, so until it restarts properly you many not have much algae. Same thing for rotifers. If you just plan to add it to the display and not breed fish, then you can probably live with this system. While you do not have algae you can grow the Rotifers with baking yeast (not the powder). It grows them fine (you actually don't need the algae) but it does not give them very good nutrition and normally the concentrations are not that high.

I used to grow about 300 to 900 litters of algae a day (in bags, not reactors) so I'm pretty confident with it. The amount you change depends on the growth rate. if it doubles every day (which it can) then you could change almost 50% water a day. However, you would be at the limit and I did not want to worry, so I scaled it to 20%. Again, this was just for a trial. I would say 10 to 30% harvest a day should be good, but it mostly depends on the growth rate (which reactor, lights, type of media used, CO2 or no CO2 and which species).

Any more questions let me know.
Cheers

 

[hmmmmm]

You are welcome glad to help.

You could run the phyto like a ATS or a refugium .....
Cheers

Ok cool, so it would be possible to run it for longer with smaller amounts, i just need to scale everything down. My thinking is that everything gets minimized to only allow a certain amount of growth. Maybe diluting a bit more than you would normally do, or not running the light 24/7 but maybe 1 hour on 1 hour off. That way it will slow the process, less food=less nutrient=less growth=less problems? I can always turn it up as soon as i need it for fry.

Ive looked into building a reactor, but its add up quickly.. The acrylic tube is expensive to order if you only need 1 piece. Then the lids, tubes, light etc. I was easily going up to 150 for the parts needed, and it takes a lot of time to build something properly.

I already had an order open with Pacific Sun for a KH Lab, and they have 20% discount atm, so no extra shipping cost means i can get a proper one for 200. Not going to mess around and spend a weekend for 50 euros. I know its not needed but i dont like having buckets and hacked up coke bottles in my new fish 'room' ;Headphone It already has ports for feeding/air etc so hooking up the doser to this should be easy.

This will be used for the Phyto, still need something for the rotifers, getting another reactor is simply to expensive, and since it doesnt need a light im thinking old media reactor or acrylic ato tank i have laying around.

 

[Skydvr]

Check out Reed Mariculture's Rotifer Support Page A lot of good resources on required algae densities and has a daily feed calculator. The Apocyclops product page has a PDF with a good semi-automated culture process. Take a look at the Compact Culture System as well. Between those, you should get some good ideas.

The trick is having a high enough density to add a sufficient number of rotifers without adding too much extra water to your system, yet still have a low enough density to not pollute the culture too quickly. With an automated system that is adding culture water to your display or larval growout, you likely don't want to be adding the pH buffers and ammonia stabilizers that a more dense culture would typically have. A screened bottom or cage within the main culture vessel to allow for a larger water volume with a high density culture area might work if you use a bubble screen to keep the mesh from clogging.

A rotifer culture with enough airflow (not too much) to keep the rotifers reasonably distributed that overflows into the main system would probably work better than a system that uses separate pumps, keeping them balanced will be difficult with a reasonable cost. Stacking peristaltic pump heads would help so you don't have issues with different motor speeds.. Pump a percentage of fresh saltwater into the culture, pump a specific volume of phyto culture into the rotifer culture, replace the volume of nutrient dosed water into the phyto culture.

It would be easier to have one stage flow into the next, just add new water to the phyto culture, but I'm not about to recommend modding that brand new reactor. Something similar to the Geosapper. You could probably adapt your reactor for something like that. There are some other thread on here about trying to develop continuous systems like this one.

I've been working on setting up a breeding project, somewhat slowly. Much like you, I find myself getting depressed and bred if I am not working on projects or thinking about how to design something to solve an issue or improve something that doesn't quite fit my needs. I have started culturing phytoplankton and I'm scaling up a Tigriopus culture with more copepods and rotifers to follow. I was planning on culturing with RGcomplete and enriching with fresh phyto, but I am starting to realize that I'm probably going to end up using other Reed Mriculture products for enrichment and ditch the phyto unless I start working with sponges and clams or just start dosing my display again.

It will be far easier to use the concentrated products (some can be frozen) and harvest rotifers daily, copepods as needed or weekly to maintain the culture density and concentration of adults depending on larval needs. If I don't need nauplii, storing what I harvest in the fridge then adding to a small container with a high concentration of enrichment feed to drip into the tank will keep a good concentration of food in the tank with maximal nutrition. Trade excess to a LFS for credit.

 

[Jaebster]

Here's my idea, yet to be proven, and still in planning stages...

AquaFuge 2 — CPR Aquatic, Inc

www.cpraquaticinc.com

This fuge is a hang-on fuge is various sizes, has a light and lid. I'm thinking this could be used as a phytoreactor, hung on my sump with the hang-on fuge water outlet going into the refugium area in my sump. (the fuge area in my sump is after the skimmer and UV aand the water from my refugium chamber goes to my return pumps). The pump that the hang-on fuge comes with will not be utilized and the water intake will be blocked off. The fuge will be filled with 1.019 s.g. saltwater and phyto. An air pump with bubble wand will be placed in the bottom of fuge to keep the phyto circulated. A doser will pump 1.019 s.g. saltwater from a reservoir into the fuge during various times throughout the day and night and the phyto will be gravity fed into the refugium area of the sump by the volume of water being dosed. I havent calculated it all out yet but the idea it to dose throughout a 3 day cycle so that 1/8th of the water volume of the fuge will be pumped in per day. 1 day will be a rest day when fertilizer will be dosed sparingly so that the phyto can feed and burn up the fertilizer. Then back to 3 day dosing cycle and so forth.
Lights for hang-on fuge will be on a schedule opposite of the DT 16 hrs a day (maybe even 24 hrs a day).
The concern is how long this can be sustained until the phyto crashes from contaminants. I dont think the phyto would crash from overpopulation as the periodic dosing will thin out the phyto. The goal is to try and maintain between a 50% to 75% of full capacity in the hang-on fuge at all times.
Also a concern is the salinity of the DT over time, though AWC and ATO can be calculated to make up and compensate for the increasing salinity.
It sounds so simple and if it was, I'm sure others have already tried it but for some reason, it's not being done.
I'm sure theres a fatal flaw somewhere, i.e. some people say that the new water being dosed in must be sterilized. I figure it's worth a try. Even if it doesnt work in the long run, I'm sure it will work for at least 1 to 2 weeks and I wouldn't mind resterilizing the hang-on for another 1 or 2 cycles of feeding with fresh phyto. It will at least reduce the daily/periodic manual phyto feeding. Without experimenting, this hobby will go nowhere. Please comment or make suggestions if you'd like.