Diy pod/phyto culture jars….look-a-likes

((FORDTECH))

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 23, 2020
Messages
4,838
Reaction score
4,270
Location
Chicago
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
1st of all..thank you very much for taking the time to post this list. I'm not a very "creative" type of person.

Is it just me? I can only see a link to the "John Guest Stem Barb Connector"...all the others above it and in the previous post show some text but no pic or link.....

screenshot of what I see...maybe it's just me....
Screenshot (213).png
Turn off dark mode and try again
 

((FORDTECH))

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 23, 2020
Messages
4,838
Reaction score
4,270
Location
Chicago
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
So I decided I needed more vessels for expanding my pod and phyto cultures. I had already purchased the posieden reef system so I wanted everything to match as closely as possible so I set out to build look-a-like vessels. To buy extra tanks from them it is $85.95 and I was able to put mine together for $49.15 a piece. I could have saved a little money on lights as they only use two wraps around their jars and I have 6. This will bump my jar count to 6 total. My plan is for 2 phytoplankton and 4 copepod cultures. Gonna get the water made up tomorrow and hopefully have all 6 going by sunday!

07E10395-8D5C-4064-97BD-49B75595482A.jpeg C77990C4-8FF6-48E1-BDA4-619F5D52FD64.jpeg 89128216-AEF5-4743-82AD-2419D9E1169E.jpeg
I wish you had some testing done already with this. I’m curious why Poseidon only uses 2 wraps and I have questioned if more light would give me darker phyto. I felt they used 2 wraps only to save money and more light would be better so that why I’m curious which tanks do better. Ones with more light or the original. I also have a 4 tank Poseidon system and wanted more without that price tag.
 
OP
OP
Derrick0580

Derrick0580

Valuable Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 6, 2022
Messages
1,707
Reaction score
1,897
Location
Lafayette Indiana
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
I wish you had some testing done already with this. I’m curious why Poseidon only uses 2 wraps and I have questioned if more light would give me darker phyto. I felt they used 2 wraps only to save money and more light would be better so that why I’m curious which tanks do better. Ones with more light or the original. I also have a 4 tank Poseidon system and wanted more without that price tag.
I honestly don’t know. The light spectrum from the soft white led’s I use is 6500k and it’s definitely not as bright. I didn’t know PSR spectrum when I bought all of the stuff to build these. I just looked at a few posts that came up on google search as far as a good spectrum for culturing phyto and 6500 was the most mentioned. I’ve harvest 3-4 times already with my diy tanks and the color is about the same from both jars. I however am having trouble getting my diy setup to keep pods….I think it could be that I started it from splitting my original culture and I didn’t get very many naupulii and juveniles and the adults I did get died out before they could get a good start.
 

((FORDTECH))

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 23, 2020
Messages
4,838
Reaction score
4,270
Location
Chicago
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
I honestly don’t know. The light spectrum from the soft white led’s I use is 6500k and it’s definitely not as bright. I didn’t know PSR spectrum when I bought all of the stuff to build these. I just looked at a few posts that came up on google search as far as a good spectrum for culturing phyto and 6500 was the most mentioned. I’ve harvest 3-4 times already with my diy tanks and the color is about the same from both jars. I however am having trouble getting my diy setup to keep pods….I think it could be that I started it from splitting my original culture and I didn’t get very many naupulii and juveniles and the adults I did get died out before they could get a good start.
Yes 6500k is what I came up with also. When I was on home depot didn’t see anything I liked so I went with these from Amazon.
 

((FORDTECH))

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 23, 2020
Messages
4,838
Reaction score
4,270
Location
Chicago
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
I found that the strips are different size one is 8mm and other is 10mm. The 10mm uses and led called 5050 and the 8 mm uses 2835 led. I found that the 5050 led gets a lot hotter then the 2835 so thinking about using the smaller led except the 5050 strip is weather proof and has a rubber seal over the led but the 8mm 2835 led is not weather proof and has nothing covering the led
 
OP
OP
Derrick0580

Derrick0580

Valuable Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 6, 2022
Messages
1,707
Reaction score
1,897
Location
Lafayette Indiana
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
I measured the temp on both of my cultures because I read phyto prefers a certain temperature range and the diy jar was right in the middle of that range and the poseiden jar was about 5-6 degrees over the suggested temp range but haven’t had any issues with that so far. Could be why they only have 2 wraps on their jars. When I made mine I didn’t even take that into consideration because I knew I would have dimmers available but even with the multiple wraps of leds I used it still doesn’t get as warm, thinking because of being a soft white led.
 
OP
OP
Derrick0580

Derrick0580

Valuable Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 6, 2022
Messages
1,707
Reaction score
1,897
Location
Lafayette Indiana
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
These are the lights I used. The price has went up since I bought them though. Thinking I paid $19.99 a set. I went with these because A: it said they were 6500k and B: they are dimmable and were already wired with the correct ends for the dimmers and splitters I bought. A lot of the cheaper versions I saw on amazon did not come with any power source or connections, just a positive and negative bare wire you have to buy the stuff and wire it up yourself and then you run the risk of not getting the connections 100% covered and risk getting them wet!



 

((FORDTECH))

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 23, 2020
Messages
4,838
Reaction score
4,270
Location
Chicago
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
These are the lights I used. The price has went up since I bought them though. Thinking I paid $19.99 a set. I went with these because A: it said they were 6500k and B: they are dimmable and were already wired with the correct ends for the dimmers and splitters I bought. A lot of the cheaper versions I saw on amazon did not come with any power source or connections, just a positive and negative bare wire you have to buy the stuff and wire it up yourself and then you run the risk of not getting the connections 100% covered and risk getting them wet!



Only issue I see is looks like your lights maybe 3700k not 6500k but if it works all that matters. I think I’m gunna go geek for us all and use my par meter inside a Poseidon jar to see what it is and try to then see how many loops of my Amazon strip matches it.
 
OP
OP
Derrick0580

Derrick0580

Valuable Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 6, 2022
Messages
1,707
Reaction score
1,897
Location
Lafayette Indiana
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
This is the site I saw they used 4000k on their “industrial” light. Pretty sure this is why i went with 3700 since it was as close to 4000k that my local home depot had in stock. A lot of sites suggest 6500 but also a lot of the more “scientific” lab grade type sites say basically any type of full spectrum light will work. And I can attest that these do work.
 
OP
OP
Derrick0580

Derrick0580

Valuable Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 6, 2022
Messages
1,707
Reaction score
1,897
Location
Lafayette Indiana
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Only issue I see is looks like your lights maybe 3700k not 6500k but if it works all that matters. I think I’m gunna go geek for us all and use my par meter inside a Poseidon jar to see what it is and try to then see how many loops of my Amazon strip matches it.
I guess I could do this as well with what I have built already. I just know with like 6 wraps of the home depot lights it still doesn’t get as warm as the 2 wraps of the PRS jars!
 
OP
OP
Derrick0580

Derrick0580

Valuable Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 6, 2022
Messages
1,707
Reaction score
1,897
Location
Lafayette Indiana
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Thank you for share, very good investment but pricey. Mine is 2 sweet tubs (free), 1 air pump £10, with split pipe to both, outside container (still have 4 tubs spare.. if I want more)
Getting a good load for my mandarin and flame scooter :)
Unsure of net quality/size but easily catches the fat copepods (video)

Still work in progress :)
I tried a cheap aqueon 5.5 gallon tank with a jar of 5280 algae barn mixed pods and just didn’t feel I was getting the number of pods I do with the jar. Could be a surface area issue where the jar keeps them in closer proximity of each other to breed even though I only had the tank less than half full. I went with this type of build because I’m anal about having cobbled diy looking setups and prefer it all match as close as possible. Nothing against anyone else’s setups, just my preference since the pod cultures are in the living room where people see them. Plus having them all self contained like this it takes up less room not having a shop light or something similar taking up even more room.
 

ReefGenesis

Community Member
View Badges
Joined
Jul 23, 2022
Messages
42
Reaction score
31
Location
USA
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Amazing thread, @Derrick0580! Have you found a less expensive alternative to the disposable items in the setup, i.e the bags?

What length are the disposable tubing pieces?
 
OP
OP
Derrick0580

Derrick0580

Valuable Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 6, 2022
Messages
1,707
Reaction score
1,897
Location
Lafayette Indiana
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
ALFA Fishery Bags Pack of 100...

I ordered these and so far they seem to work well. 100 bags for 25 bucks

the tubes are around 9” but I always trim an inch or so off because I have had them touch the side of the bags and it block the air which caused the phyto to drop out of suspension.
 

ReefGenesis

Community Member
View Badges
Joined
Jul 23, 2022
Messages
42
Reaction score
31
Location
USA
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
ALFA Fishery Bags Pack of 100...

I ordered these and so far they seem to work well. 100 bags for 25 bucks

the tubes are around 9” but I always trim an inch or so off because I have had them touch the side of the bags and it block the air which caused the phyto to drop out of suspension.

Very nice. Thanks for the link. Did you use airline filters with your new jars? If so, do you have a link for those, as well. I wasn’t able to find them, but there’s a chance I was using the wrong search terms.
 

NowGlazeIT

Happy to help, Ask away.
View Badges
Joined
Oct 28, 2017
Messages
6,119
Reaction score
11,438
Location
Coachella Valley
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
So I decided I needed more vessels for expanding my pod and phyto cultures. I had already purchased the posieden reef system so I wanted everything to match as closely as possible so I set out to build look-a-like vessels. To buy extra tanks from them it is $85.95 and I was able to put mine together for $49.15 a piece. I could have saved a little money on lights as they only use two wraps around their jars and I have 6. This will bump my jar count to 6 total. My plan is for 2 phytoplankton and 4 copepod cultures. Gonna get the water made up tomorrow and hopefully have all 6 going by sunday!

07E10395-8D5C-4064-97BD-49B75595482A.jpeg C77990C4-8FF6-48E1-BDA4-619F5D52FD64.jpeg 89128216-AEF5-4743-82AD-2419D9E1169E.jpeg
Inspiring! Super clean too.
 

((FORDTECH))

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 23, 2020
Messages
4,838
Reaction score
4,270
Location
Chicago
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
I guess I could do this as well with what I have built already. I just know with like 6 wraps of the home depot lights it still doesn’t get as warm as the 2 wraps of the PRS jars!
Hmm interesting this is something to consider
 
OP
OP
Derrick0580

Derrick0580

Valuable Member
View Badges
Joined
Jan 6, 2022
Messages
1,707
Reaction score
1,897
Location
Lafayette Indiana
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Very nice. Thanks for the link. Did you use airline filters with your new jars? If so, do you have a link for those, as well. I wasn’t able to find them, but there’s a chance I was using the wrong search terms.
I do not, but i saw syringe filters the other day that looked similar to what PSR sent in their kit.
 
Back
Top