Very nice looking culture. I ran into your thread by accident but it's the best thing that happened lately.9 days since the automated culture started, is now showing a rich green colour can barely see the light behind the photoreactor.
despite the continuous addition of phytoplankton to the aquarium the culture seems to be maturing well. I’ve increased dosage from 3ml per hour or 72ml per day to 4ml per hour or 96ml per day on my 26 gallon tank.
this will translate to a weekly dosage of 672ml per week, will test parameters later on and see how this will affect the overall system in the weeks to come.
I did dose my 100 gal tank heavy with phytoplankton( 80 ml a day...earlier even more)
The problem: I grow my phyto with miracle grow. My color reading of red sea tests must have been way off.
I had 0.12 ppm phosphate and around 25 ppm nitrate...so i thought.
Had an Icp test done....holy ****... phosphate of 1.125 ppm.
So i got me Hanna Nitrate and phosphate test kits and look...Nitrate was 59.9 ppm.
So i reduced phyto atm to 20 ml per week and after 3 weeks and heaps of waterchanges and some phosban i got nitrates down to 10ppm and phosphates down to 0.2 ppm, i think my chaeto started growing now too.
Just ordered me some of the TNC(luckily you can buy that in Australia but not cheap)
I need the phytodosing for my mandarin(copepods), xmastrees and coco worm so hope the Tnc will do the trick and maybe one day ill set up the auto culture. Great idea.Thumbs up. Thanks