Growing phyto question

[Dkmoo]

Might be a stupid question but I'm trying to grow my own, so here it goes - every video and "how to" instruction I saw says that in order to keep the culture going, its always some variation of you gotta "split" the batch into 2 new clean containers, keep one to regrow, and use the other one for feeding. It seems every variation of this has the constant of "you gotta split it into 2 new clean bottles".

Why is that? Why can't I just drain my existing container to 1/2, put the half in fridge to feed my tank, and refill the old container with more salt water + f2 and keep it going?

Is "split using new clean bottle" that critical to keep everything clean and prevent contamination? Isn't whatever contaminant that was in the old container going to get into the new clean bottle anyway?

 

[ZoWhat]

Why is that? Why can't I just drain my existing container to 1/2, put the half in fridge to feed my tank, and refill the old container with more salt water + f2 and keep it going?

You could do that and probably get about 4-6 cycles of it.

But eventually green slime/film will build up on the inner walls.

That slime I believe contains variations of unwanted different algae that will overtake whatever you are growing.

Best Practices at the end of every couple cycles is to drain the brewing container and scrub it out with a bottle brush and tap water. No need to goes bonkers making it so sterile you could perform surgery. Just make it surface clean with no signs of algae film or slime inside to container.

What you do and at what % you spilt your batch is your choice.

Just need a surface clean the inside of the container every other brewing cycle. No exceptions....

If you don't clean it, it will eventually CRASH by your brew turning a nasty yellow brown.

It's then you would have to throw every bit of phyto fluid out and order new phyto

.

 

[Dkmoo]

You could do that and probably get about 4-6 cycles of it.

But eventually green slime/film will build up on the inner walls.

That slime I believe contains variations of unwanted different algae that will overtake whatever you are growing.

Best Practices at the end of every couple cycles is to drain the brewing container and scrub it out with a bottle brush and tap water. No need to goes bonkers making it so sterile you could perform surgery. Just make it surface clean with no signs of algae film or slime inside to container.

What you do and at what % you spilt your batch is your choice.

Just need a surface clean the inside if the container every other brewing cycle. No exceptions....

If you don't clean it, it will eventually CRASH by your brew turning a nasty yellow brown. It's Then you would have to throw every bit of phyto fluid out and order new phyto

.

Makes a lot of sense. Ty for the detailed answer

 

[ZoWhat]

Makes a lot of sense. Ty for the detailed answer

Glad it makes sense to you. I've been brewing my own phyto for year and a half.

Been through two crashes where I had to start over. Both were caused by not cleaning the inside of the container

 

[Dkmoo]

Glad it makes sense to you. I've been brewing my own phyto for year and a half.

Been through two crashes where I had to start over. Both were caused by not cleaning the inside of the container

Just started Day1 - a couple of questions I would appreciate some input:

1) I used phyto feast to seed, like the ReefDude youtube video. It didn't look as green as i expected, so I added a bit more Tommy's. See pic. Does this look like the right color? I also added the right dose of f2

2) as you can see, I'm using sunlight. Its a bit cloudy today which may also caused to color to be a bit dull. Is this enough light? Its a south facing window so generally get direct sun light for a few hours before the trees and neighboring buildings block it again in the lower angles.

 

[Subsea]

That will work. However, to maximize production more light is required. I use a 2L water dispenser with a wide mouth top and a Par 38 LED 14W bulb at 5K color spectrum at the top. Every 3 days culture doubles in density. I am now batch dosing 8 Oz each day.

one half liter was dosed yesterday evening, I use makeup water from the tank and add Guillard’s modified F2 from Mercer of Montana. I am also growing their culture of Tetraselmis phytoplankton.

when the bottom of phytoplankton culture container is darker, due to light penetration unable to adequately illuminate the culture on the bottom, it’s time to harvest.

 

[Dkmoo]

Success! Thank you all for the help!

Sunlight works, but is slow. Took a full week to turn to a light lime green color but still good light penetration. Over the weekend i decide to pick up a cheap table lamp and put in a 5k 12W LED. Boy that made the world of difference, over the weekend it turned to a much darker green and Monday I can clearly see that the light was unable to reach the bottom so harvested 8 bottles =).

Now one more question - is there any risk of overdosing? I don't mean dumping whole bottles in, but I feel like the "typical" dosage of like 5 ml per 10G that I typical see not very applicable bc concentrations can be so varied. I have a 29G, so dosing 15ml of phyto feast is going to be a lot different than dosing my own since phyto feast is so thick. So now I just resorted to just dumping a few "glugs" every morning before light turn on, and a few more glugs at night after light turn off.

Is there any "eye test" on how much we should dose? Turn the water green? Don't turn it green? So far no adverse effects are observed.

 

[Subsea]

I add 1L of dark green phytoplankton to a 100G system every other day. Display tank water shows light green tint for < 1hr. In my culture container, when density of phyto prevents light from reaching bottom of container, then it’s time to harvest.

Because I use display tank water, I keep sufficient phytoplankton refrigerated to restart culture if it crashes. Best I can tell, I double phytoplankton culture every three days. I have been running this way for 6 months.