How to preserve phyto?

[CloudReefer]

Hi all, is there a way to kill and preserve phyto at home? I'm currently feeding live phyto and it bottoms my nutrients out. It's a lightly stocked tank at the moment.

It was suggested to me to completely freeze the phyto, but that makes me think it might burst the cells?

Appreciate any thoughts!

 

[Lemons]

Unless you can flash freeze the cells, freezing em just pops most of them lol.

Personally i just keep what im dosing in the fridge, agitating it every day and opening the bottle for some gas exchange. Seems to last like 2weeks if im not dosing

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

keep it in the fridge, it should be good for 2-3 months at least

 

[CloudReefer]

Y'all I'm *trying* to kill it lol

 

[Narideth]

Hah, OP's goal is to kill the phyto so it's sill a food source but not eating up their nutrients. That being said, I have no idea how to do it, but I'm following to see if anyone knows the best way.

 

[twentyleagues]

Try hitting up @Dinkins Aquatic Gardens or another vendor for thoughts on the situation?

 

[Reefkeepers Archive]

Add copepods to the bottle, along with an airstone. In about a week your phyto will have reacted with the pods and be converted to copepods, which don't absorb phosphates

Lol, of course I'm joking, though when phyto is dead it does release nutrients, just as an FYI

 

[CloudReefer]

Bump!

 

[Reef By Steele]

As stated freezing will burst the cells. If you are wanting to concentrate and make a paste, you would need a 1-5 um filter media and strain your phytoplankton through that and then rinse into a container with as little saltwater as possible. Unless you have access to a large centrifuge.

 

[DaJMasta]

The above is all that comes to mind for me - you don't exactly want to kill them in a way that will make them burst, because then the things that would eat them won't be able to.

That said, they probably didn't bottom out your nutrients, so I'd just keep feeding it. Live phyto gets pulled out of the water really quickly by filter feeders, skimmers, and the like, so unless your water is turning green with growth, any nutrient reductions from the phyto is going to be well under what's measurable on a test kit.

 

[CloudReefer]

I have been testing, it's definitely the phyto. I have not been adding it, and let my phosphates get to .18. I dosed 10mL of phyto this morning, came home from work and it was 0.04. Multiple tests, and have done this 2x and same results.

 

[DaJMasta]

Honestly, a change of 80ppb is likely in the noise for a home test kit, it's not much. For reference, that 10mL, when grown to a very high density (a live culture, not a concentrate), takes approximately 0.013 mL of Guillard f/2 fertilizer (both parts combined). A standard f/2 formula uses 5g/L worth of phosphate, so 13 uL of that contains roughly 2.6 micrograms of dry phosphate.

A microgram of a nutrient added to a liter of water raises is by 1 ppb, so if adding around 3 micrograms of a nutrient to a tank makes it raise by 80 ppb, your tank is about 37.5 mL in volume - a little more than an ounce. If my rough calculations are off by a factor of ten thousand, that puts you in a 100G total system volume ballpark.... but they're probably not that far off.

The reality is like what I said above, dosing phytoplankton doesn't lower your nutrients by anything unless you have a massive amount growing (a visible tint to the water is the right ballpark), and the organisms eating it lock up the phosphate temporarily in their tissues for growth, eventually releasing it back into the water column and increasing the phosphate. I've been dosing phyto heavily to my tanks for more than a year and they ALWAYS read high for phosphates than without - above 1 ppm is quite common, I've seen almost 3 ppm when I get lax with the phosphate remover. And those levels are achieved with 300 mL of phytoplankton dosed daily in the long term to an ~40G system, and the phyto I've been growing is denser than any culture I've bought commercially.

 

[Pistondog]

I have been testing, it's definitely the phyto. I have not been adding it, and let my phosphates get to .18. I dosed 10mL of phyto this morning, came home from work and it was 0.04. Multiple tests, and have done this 2x and same results.

Phyto does not use up po4 like that, especially 10 ml. I dose a lot of phyto with awcs and my po4 is always above .25 ppm.
10 ml of phyto is a very small amount.

 

[CloudReefer]

Honestly, a change of 80ppb is likely in the noise for a home test kit, it's not much. For reference, that 10mL, when grown to a very high density (a live culture, not a concentrate), takes approximately 0.013 mL of Guillard f/2 fertilizer (both parts combined). A standard f/2 formula uses 5g/L worth of phosphate, so 13 uL of that contains roughly 2.6 micrograms of dry phosphate.

A microgram of a nutrient added to a liter of water raises is by 1 ppb, so if adding around 3 micrograms of a nutrient to a tank makes it raise by 80 ppb, your tank is about 37.5 mL in volume - a little more than an ounce. If my rough calculations are off by a factor of ten thousand, that puts you in a 100G total system volume ballpark.... but they're probably not that far off.

The reality is like what I said above, dosing phytoplankton doesn't lower your nutrients by anything unless you have a massive amount growing (a visible tint to the water is the right ballpark), and the organisms eating it lock up the phosphate temporarily in their tissues for growth, eventually releasing it back into the water column and increasing the phosphate. I've been dosing phyto heavily to my tanks for more than a year and they ALWAYS read high for phosphates than without - above 1 ppm is quite common, I've seen almost 3 ppm when I get lax with the phosphate remover. And those levels are achieved with 300 mL of phytoplankton dosed daily in the long term to an ~40G system, and the phyto I've been growing is denser than any culture I've bought commercially.

Good stuff! ~66g total system volume after rock/sand displacement etc.

Well, everytime I hit the tank with the phyto I get dino blooms and because those blooms coincided with:

1. 0.00 phosphates
2. Only happens after phyto
3. I have repeated this test 2x now, with the same result. I will do a 3rd.

I'm able to control my nitrates and phosphates easily with carbon dosing. I test phosphates 1x-2x per day for over a month now to see trends and adjust dosing. I do not carbon dose at the moment.

I only collect ~1 cup skimmate per week, and have a filter sock I run and change every other day at the most. With my limited knowledge I don't know what else could be causing the huge nutrient drops this consistently timed with phyto dosing. I have even dosed early at night, and do not witness the nutrient drop until after lights come on. Testing after lights out, midnight, morning and when I get home from work.

 

[CloudReefer]

Phyto does not use up po4 like that, especially 10 ml. I dose a lot of phyto with awcs and my po4 is always above .25 ppm.
10 ml of phyto is a very small amount.

That's what I thought. I have used other live phyto before that did not affect it this much.

 

[CloudReefer]

I keep a detailed log, Imma go through it and see if I can find something else I'm doing that could be causing this.

Appreciate all the information here! So much to learn, so little time...

 

[Reef By Steele]

When you say carbon dosing, what are you using? I ask because I saw no noticeable change in phosphates from dosing a homemade No-Pox of vodka, vinegar and RODI. I had to use Lanthanum to reduce my phosphates.

I’m a strong proponent of phytoplankton reducing nutrients, but you say big swings when you hit it with phyto, and 10 ml to 60 gallons? That doesn’t seem like enough to change the dynamics in the tank.

 

[CloudReefer]

When you say carbon dosing, what are you using? I ask because I saw no noticeable change in phosphates from dosing a homemade No-Pox of vodka, vinegar and RODI. I had to use Lanthanum to reduce my phosphates.

I’m a strong proponent of phytoplankton reducing nutrients, but you say big swings when you hit it with phyto, and 10 ml to 60 gallons? That doesn’t seem like enough to change the dynamics in the tank.

I've been using bacto balance. I stopped a little before I started this batch of live phyto from a seller here on the forums. In my tank, a dose of 0.65mL of the bacto will lower my po4 by .02-.04 in a 24 hour period.

Yeah, my first dose with this phyto was 20mL and I thought that was conservative. That was in the morning and by the time I got home I had dinos all over the place. I then fed a little heavy and let po4 rise to above .1 to help get rid of the dinos but also so i could test and see the results. and that's what i did 2x with nearly identical results both times.

I trust the math and experience shared here in this thread so now I wonder, if it's not the phyto, what else is it?

 

[Reef By Steele]

So how mature is the tank, and how heavily stocked? fish and corals?

 

[CloudReefer]

Going into 8 months old. Just finished with the GHA stage. Still pretty young. Good corraline growth, a few hitchiker corals, bunch of bivalves, sponges etc. Pretty lightly stocked, 5 fish, couple of shrimp, typical clean up crew. Other than some dino tank is doing pretty good.