New take on dosing phyto

[chippwalters]

Hey folks,

Long time reefer but don't post much here. I've been discussing creating a phyto dosing system with some professional aquarium folks, and have done a bit of research and I would like to get some feedback on a system design. Of course it all would need testing, but I thought I'd like to get some opinions along the way.

My water has almost zero nitrates, yet I recently got some brown algae, and it stayed for quite awhile. During that time, I started dosing both phyto and copepods for a new mated mandarin pair and to my great surprise, the algae left almost immediately. Then I saw this on YT and things made sense:



My good bacteria didn't have enough nutrients to out-compete the brown algae.

So, I've been dosing about 5-10 ml every day for a month now, and the tank looks stunning. All the corals have great color and polyp extension.

That got me thinking about creating my own simple dosing system. I've read all the threads I can find on continuous phyto reactor dosing, and then saw this: the guy who sells the most phyto on the planet (according to him) said phyto doesn't need to be alive to be beneficial to organisms. Huh?



OK then. Continuing the thinking, and so I came up with this idea:

This concept focuses on a 2-step process:

1. A counter top phyto station that can be used to create bottled phyto for refrigeration. The station can process 2 bottles at a time and there are 6 32oz bottles. Each bottle will take 4-6 days to “bake” so all 6 bottles can be filled in just over 3 weeks, and put in the fridge. Then the station can be put up until next bake.

2. A sump bracket works with one bottle at a time and uses a ~2-week drip cycle to dispense the bottled phyto into the sump (about 0.18 cups a day for a 200 gallon tank-- normal recommended is 5ml/10 gal every other day so that would be 0.07 cups ). The mounting fixture allows for the phyto to be randomly “shaken.”

The goal was to not have to funnel and post process the phyto, but keep it in it's original container. Minimizes contamination and also provides the dispensing system.

Of course #2 could be optional-- if the 2-week fresh phyto drip dose doesn't work. Definitely needs testing.

So, because I have a 3D printer, I thought the below renders could be a good way to go. The total cost of just the supplies (not including the print) is under $30 for the counter top station.

So, I'm looking for *constructive* feedback. I'll continue this build thread as I learn more about this (or other direction). Thanks.

 

[Hydrored]

I was dosing phyto and switched to easyreefs booster and saw the same results personally, good idea but too much work for me personally as somebody who is always traveling for work. Watching the thread to see where it goes

 

[Timfish]

Cool pics! Are they of a finished product you already have? Looks and sounds like a pretty simple and easy setup. I like the idea of slowly feeding the system over a week or two weeks, seems like that would be a more natural way to feed. Have you found anything saying what the optimum feeding rate is for a given number of corals?

 

[ZoWhat]

I dose roughly 32ozs of tetraselmis phyto that I home brew every night 1 hr before lights out

NO3 stays around 5-10

I use to struggle with algae and GHA like everyone else that posts this problem 10,000,000,000,000 on these forums

Took about 2-3mos but my nightly tetraselmis phyto dosing started outcompeting all algae

I have NOT seen any algae (past glass film) in over a year.... and I feed heavy bc im mostly zoas/palys


.

 

[G Santana]

I dose roughly 32ozs of tetraselmis phyto that I home brew every night 1 hr before lights out

NO3 stays around 5-10

I use to struggle with algae and GHA like everyone else that posts this problem 10,000,000,000,000 on these forums

Took about 2-3mos but my nightly tetraselmis phyto dosing started outcompeting all algae

I have NOT seen any algae (past glass film) in over a year.... and I feed heavy bc im mostly zoas/palys


.

What size tank do you have that can take 32oz?
Most I have seen is folks dosing 20-30mil daily.
Curious because I just started culturing phyto and am ready to start dosing.
Thanks!!!

 

[DrZoidburg]

The only think I would worry about with dosing phyto like this would be over a 2 week period you might have bacterial contamination to your storage turning it to yellow. Eg. from air born or tank spray to the tube that drips into your tank or sump. Would be good to have a back up container culturing away from it all. Edit Nvm thought this contraption had a doser hooked up to it.

 

[ZoWhat]

What size tank do you have that can take 32oz?
Most I have seen is folks dosing 20-30mil daily.
Curious because I just started culturing phyto and am ready to start dosing.
Thanks!!!

180g DT

240ish total volume

 

[chippwalters]

The only think I would worry about with dosing phyto like this would be over a 2 week period you might have bacterial contamination to your storage turning it to yellow. Eg. from air born or tank spray to the tube that drips into your tank or sump. Would be good to have a back up container culturing away from it all. Edit Nvm thought this contraption had a doser hooked up to it.

Well, the dosing mechanism would be a very short adjustable ball valve to drip the phyto in the tank. It would have to be calibrated.

I was thinking that by using the PET bottles, and immediately refrigerating, you could keep things fairly sanitized, so when you placed it on a holder to drip dose, it would be awhile before anything bad starts to grow inside.

Another idea, would be to figure out a way to aerate the phyto in the bottle while it's drip dosing. Then I'm pretty sure it would maintain for a full 2 week period of drip dosing. Been racking my brain trying to figure that one out in a way that is simple to execute.

 

[chippwalters]

Cool pics! Are they of a finished product you already have? Looks and sounds like a pretty simple and easy setup. I like the idea of slowly feeding the system over a week or two weeks, seems like that would be a more natural way to feed. Have you found anything saying what the optimum feeding rate is for a given number of corals?

Not a finished product, just a concept for now. I, too, would like to know more about optimum dosing of phyto. I believe I'm dosing 10X recommended for my tank and things are stellar.

 

[mdb_talon]

Between my tanks(total around 400g) I dose around 3/4 of a liter daily(worked up to that amount slowly). When I started with phyto i was using dead bottled phyto and noticed little difference and stopped. Sometime later started live phyto and immediately noticed a difference(with a couple weeks). Not a very scientific test and mostly based off the "eye test", but at least in my mind live is better than dead.

2 tanks i just manually pour some in. My frag system i have setup to a doser connected to a culturing container and a light and bubbler on it to keep it alive. The only difference between my dosing setup and my culture setup is for dosing I dont put fertilize for the week to 10 days prior to putting it in place. My dosing container is swapped out every few days as it is near empty then. If i am going away for more than a few days i put several liters into a larger container, but the culture does not do as well which is why normally I do containers that are sized for only a few days.

As for your idea i dont know if i understand it lol. I dont use any funnels or post processing whatsoever. I culture it and then use it or give it away. Every sunday i split cultures and fertilize(other than the cultures i will be dosing that week) About once every 6 to 8 weeks i make an extra few containers and swap out my refrigerated backup culture and that same week I clean all my culture containers as that seems to be how long i go before excessive "gunk" starts building up. That is really the only "processing" that i do and again it is about every 7 weeks on average.

I have only been doing live phyto for several months so maybe i am missing something, but at least for me it seems pretty straightforward and dont see a reason to add any complexity to it.

 

[Dennis Cartier]

Here is my 2 cents on this topic. I have been interested in this over the years and studied what results others were getting. A point that comes up again and again, is that you want to prevent dosing the left over fertilizer into the tank if possible. In Dana's thread on this, he noted that his particular phyto of choice was running out of phosphate during the growth phase. So other nutrients would be left over in excess after the phosphate was consumed by the phyto. In this example, phosphate is limiting, but other phytos may consume nutrients in differing ratios and have a different combination of leftover nutrients.

The normal way of removing the leftover fertilizer is to 'wash' the phyto and separate the phyto from the culture fertilizer. This involves processes and equipment not available to the average hobbyist.

To reduce the impact of dosing possibly leftover nutrients, one approach is to condense the phyto to allow the most phyto to be dosed with the least amount of leftover fertilizer nutrients. A way of accomplishing this is to take advantage of the fact that phyto will settle and condense when cooled. Placing a container of phyto in a fridge will result in the phyto settling into a condensed layer in the lower portion of the container. Dosing from the container, drawing from the condensed phyto, will allow a higher ratio of phyto to culture solution to be dosed. As an example, using a 1L culture container, you could dose most of the phyto, while only dosing 250 ml of the solution.

This approach works best when used in a fish room and a small fridge can be utilized for holding the phyto, a dosing pump along with a injection loop. Where other additives require refrigeration, they can also be included in this type of setup. For additives that require periodic mixing, their reservoir can be placed on magnetic mixers, etc.

For those where everything has to fit inside a stand, a single bottle wine cooler may be able to be utilized to cool and condense the phyto (though I have not tried this, so YMMV).

Anyway I think that dosing live phyto both as a means of nutrient control and feeding the zooplankton in the water column is a worthy idea to explore.

Dennis

 

[DrZoidburg]

I also split the cultures about once a week. I have tested with my own fertilizer mix ingredients that it uses the phosphate much faster than nitrate. It takes about a week +/- to deplete the phosphate. I can confirm that. The only one I haven't tested yet is the iron in it as kit has expired. I think that is used quickly also. If you think about it though the unused nitrate is not really contributing much to the tank nitrate. If you dump a liter of phyto in 100 gallons your diluting 180ppm unused for example in my case to only about .47ppm more in total tank nitrate levels. I have thought about an "air lift" type dosing where the air pressure inside puts phyto to the next container, but have always worried about contamination.

 

[Timfish]

Not a finished product, just a concept for now. I, too, would like to know more about optimum dosing of phyto. I believe I'm dosing 10X recommended for my tank and things are stellar.

That's an intersting observation. It didn't seem to get much attention at the time and I rarely hear about Ron Shimik anymore but he wrote an article in "Coral" with the title "Is your reef anorexic" I'll try to find it but he feed a humungous amount daily and always shut off all the pumps for 4 hours to let all the corals feed. As I recal Delbeek and Sprung had a brief discussion about what reefs get and it roughly translated to 2-5 grams dry weight per 100 gallons daily.

 

[Subsea]

@Dennis Cartier,

what fertilizer formula was used by @Dana Riddle . I use Mercer of Montana modified Guillard F2 and I grow Tetraselmis phytoplankto.

If I understood your post, because the ratio of phosphate was insufficient, the culture slowed growth and needed harvesting with much residual nutrients left in culture. Instead of dealing with unused nutrients in culture why not enhance phosphate concentration so that all nutrients are consumed simultaneously.

 

[Subsea]

That's an intersting observation. It didn't seem to get much attention at the time and I rarely hear about Ron Shimik anymore but he wrote an article in "Coral" with the title "Is your reef anorexic" I'll try to find it but he feed a humungous amount daily and always shut off all the pumps for 4 hours to let all the corals feed. As I recal Delbeek and Sprung had a brief discussion about what reefs get and it roughly translated to 2-5 grams dry weight per 100 gallons daily.

2.5 grams seems like a lot. How does on evaluate how much dry weight in 1L of dark green phyto.

 

[DrZoidburg]

2.5 grams seems like a lot. How does on evaluate how much dry weight in 1L of dark green phyto.

You would have to filter it out and actually weigh it.

 

[Subsea]

You would have to filter it out and actually weigh it.

No doubt it was done scientifically. For us average people that don’t have lab equipment, what is the comparison of how much dry phytoplankton is in a dark green liter bottle. I go by color of water in culture container on when to harvest, that’s why I grow phyto with white light instead of pink. Also, I dose my 25 year mature tank with lights on and note a visible green tint in 75G tank with 16oz of phytoplankton dosed.

 

[DrZoidburg]

As for adjusting nutrients in culture. I have and also found they crashed more with less nitrate. Also even if alive they can change color making it look like a crash. They go to a more yellowish color when higher in salinity and various nutrient conditions. I for get the exact math off hand but it came to be 200-220 ppm NO3 and 24 ppm PO4. I tried to get close to red field ratio. Also about 10 ppb Iron salts, and one drop of b vitamins for a diy f2. (4x f2 for denser cultures) Using 4ml/L of the nitrate, and about 4 ml/L of the phosphate salt I used with 4ml/L the iron. I adjusted it to about 180ppm nitrate, and 24ppm phosphate works good for my weekly split and keeps it green. Tested the nitrate/phosphate consumption using kits, but filtered out the algae with syringe filter as the kits dissolve the algae making false readings if you don't. Found that phosphate for me depletes in that week, and I don't mind the trace nitrate it adds I actually need it.

 

[Subsea]

As for adjusting nutrients in culture. I have and also found they crashed more with less nitrate. Also even if alive they can change color making it look like a crash. They go to a more yellowish color when higher in salinity and various nutrient conditions. I for get the exact math off hand but it came to be 200-220 ppm NO3 and 24 ppm PO4. I tried to get close to red field ratio. Also about 10 ppb Iron salts, and one drop of b vitamins for a diy f2. (4x f2 for denser cultures) Using 4ml/L of the nitrate, and about 4 ml/L of the phosphate salt I used with 4ml/L the iron. I adjusted it to about 180ppm nitrate, and 24ppm phosphate works good for my weekly split and keeps it green. Tested the nitrate/phosphate consumption using kits, but filtered out the algae with syringe filter as the kits dissolve the algae making false readings if you don't. Found that phosphate for me depletes in that week, and I don't mind the trace nitrate it adds I actually need it.

In my 25 yr young tank I dose ammonia with ChaetoGro. Since ChaetoGro, my dosing regime is simplistic. No need to dose phosphate, I think it comes in with the air.

I am considering using UV sterilizer on tank makeup to phyto culture.

 

[DrZoidburg]

I use sodium nitrate, and trisodium phosphate it's what I have on hand. Have to buffer it with an acid though. Mainly dosing phyto to get nutrients in tank and make pods explode so I can get some fish I want. To add I have a few picky fish in there already that are only eating live food. They clean the pods out quick. Going through about 1 gallon of pods, and about 2 liter of phyto a week doing this between a few tanks. Pods in back. All gallon jars.