Outdoor Phyto & Zooplankton Culturing

[R.Weller]

After spending $$$ on phytoplankton over the years, I decided it was time to grow this at home. I've attempted indoor culturing using incorrect source materials (so I learned), but I prefer to use as many natural elements as possible. Rather than using an air-pump & borrowed lighting from my refugium, I decided to build an outdoor culturing / growing station from an unused wood supply that was laying in the garage. I am expecting that light from the sun, & gas exchange from wind, will out perform anything I could have created indoors.

From previous attempts, we had three clear storage tubs.

The box is 46" x 18" x 18".

The depth is a little tight with the lids, & it would have been nice to have another 1" for the latches, but sometimes you have unexpected results when building on-the-fly. This violated my rule of designing first using graph paper.

The finished box is on the south side of the deck & is in full sun for 8+ hours.

After hanging the culture box, we seeded two of the tubs for zooplankton. This involved some algae scraps from our DIY algae turf scrubber & a few pieces of base rock from the refugium.

One of the zooplankton has a little chateo for good measure just to add some variety of the culture.

The final tub is dedicated to phytoplankton & the plan is to grow 3 gallons at a time as we're feeding a system that is approx 425 gallons.

Here's a pic of the box in full sun.

Finally, without the proper seed, none of this will work. I was delighted by the quality of the product that I received when ordering online.

I hope to post some growth pics as the cultures mature.

Costs:

• 29 qt (~7 gal) Clear storage tubs from Lowes - $30
• Live Phytoplankton + Fertilizer from Mercer of Montana - $27
• Wood & screws

 

[F i s h y]

I love a good diy project. This one looks fun and ill be following along. Keep us posted on your successes and the difficulties you have. I wonder about evaporation, and contamination. Perhaps a screen top?

 

[R.Weller]

After just a few days, the chateo is clearly not doing well in this environment. It occurred to me that the RO water is nutrient void, so I've added a splash of waste from the protein skimmer to the two bins for zooplankton to see if that will provide some nutrition for the algae to consume. W/o nutrition, there won't be any plankton & that will defeat the purpose.

 

[R.Weller]

I love a good diy project. This one looks fun and ill be following along. Keep us posted on your successes and the difficulties you have. I wonder about evaporation, and contamination. Perhaps a screen top?

It's does evaporate a fair amount, especially in high-winds. It's not to much that it cannot be kept up with a gallon pitcher of RO ever few days. So far, we have had a few bugs find their way onto the surface, but most are skimming & leave when they are finished. I've read that copepods will consume mosquito larvae, which we have plenty of here in Missouri, & I consider that a benefit of outdoor cultures.

As far as particulate contamination is concerned, the box is approx 15' off the ground, so I think that would be pretty low risk from solids in garden / yard waste. We'll keep an eye on it, but a screen would be very simple to install. Great idea & thanks for sharing it.

 

[Thespammailaccount]

After just a few days, the chateo is clearly not doing well in this environment. It occurred to me that the RO water is nutrient void, so I've added a splash of waste from the protein skimmer to the two bins for zooplankton to see if that will provide some nutrition for the algae to consume. W/o nutrition, there won't be any plankton & that will defeat the purpose.

Very cool. Following along. Correct macro needs nitrate and phosphate to grow. Also needs trace elements. If you are culturing pods you can feed the pods your phytoplankton

 

[R.Weller]

+7 days & it's clear that my first attempt at an outdoor phyto culture is a bust. Here's the profile pic of the 3gal culture.

When I read the instructions that came with the cutlure, I followed the recommend fertilizer dosage for 3gal, but decided to use a very small amount of live phyto as the seed (60ml). The instructions are clear they recommend using a 1:1 ratio between prepared saltwater & live cultures. As my entire live culture is approx 30 oz, I am very short.

As with everything else is this hobby, good results come with time, so I've scaled back my first culture & moved indoors until I have successful created enough volume to move the production back outdoors. So, here's my first indoor culture using everything I had hoped to avoid (air pump & borrowed refugium lighting) until I can turn this 16oz into 128oz (1 gal) to use as the seed for the 3gal outdoor culture.

And for reference, here's a short clip of the bubble rate. Hopefully the next update in 7 days will have a larger culture that has matured.

 

[R.Weller]

While this is not outdoors, it is progress & that's the point. I've managed to convert 4oz of live phyto into 12oz. That takes my cost per oz from $.56 (48oz / $27) to $.48 (56 ounces total). Next, I'll move all of this to a larger vessel, & once I have ~128oz to spare, I will move this to the outdoor shelf for a higher yield. Good things happen slowly!

 

[R.Weller]

It's been another 7 days from the last update & almost 20 days since the cultures were started. The weather has not been very cooperative. We've had mostly overcast skies & rain. The lids have been on the tubs about 1/3 of the time (limiting gas exchange) & direct sunlight for only 4-5 days. At this point, it doesn't cost anything to keep at it, so the plan is to follow through & see if anything materializes. We've not been completely devoid of success, albeit the plans have shifted as our knowledge has grown.

The first or left tub is zooplankton. The starter algae from the turf scrubber has died off, & there are no visible signs of Pods sourced from the live rock that was pulled from our refugium. The water is a little discolored as we did add a splash of live phyto from the culture grown & pictured above on 19-May. This tub will now serve as a control for the other zooplankton culture.

As we have learned & now expect, the phyto tub is going nowhere. We have very clean saltwater but we did lower the salinity from 1.024 to 1.020 as this is better suited for phyto growth. Once we have cultured 1gal indoors, we will cut the water volume in this tub & see if we cannot get it growing outside. The bubbles on the algae are an interesting way to observe photosynthesis. The algae is likely growing from the trace amount of fertilizer (less than .5ml to 3gal of water) that we added when the culture started or it is from an external contaminant.

The last or right tub is another zooplankton. As with the control above, we started with algae from the turf scrubber & live rock from the refugium. After a few days, we added a small ball of chaeto to this tub. This is the same ball pictured in the post from 10-May. We have also added a splash of live phyto from the culture grown on the 19th. In this tub we've added a sponge that we have from the intake chamber of our sump. We use this sponge to setup the QT tank whenever we add livestock to the display. The theory here is that it might contain eggs along with copepods & amphipods that are present in our main system.

So far, we have almost doubled our stock of live phytoplankton (indoors) & we have learned a few more lessons regarding what doesn't work for outdoor culturing. Time & experience will tell if we are able to achieve outdoor cultures, but we have started feeding our reef using live food that we are culturing, & there's satisfaction in that accomplishment.

 

[pigmo]

let us know if it's worth it! we're on a 'subscription' of phyto from mercer. ;Chicken

 

[R.Weller]

let us know if it's worth it! we're on a 'subscription' of phyto from mercer. ;Chicken

Will do. The indoor culture is doing very well. The second batch needs another 48 hours before harvesting, & I plan to share those results as well. The supplies for that were also inexpensive. I will have to do a third batch indoors to produce sufficient volume to move to the outdoor setup.

 

[Futuretotm]

Thank you for documenting everything, even your failures!
I hope to one day emulate your method out here in FL (in the shade ofcourse)

 

[mav3rick478]

Isn't the air pump for the Phytoplankton to keep them from settling on top of each other at the bottom of the container and then killing themselves, not for gas exchange?

 

[creativeballance]

Can you tell me what your original failure was with phytoplankton indoors?

I am currently growing out 10 gallons of phytoplankton every week, which I started originally from a 8-ounce culture that I bought from my lfs. I'm using some LED grow lights and the Mercer of Montana fertilizer.

 

[R.Weller]

Isn't the air pump for the Phytoplankton to keep them from settling on top of each other at the bottom of the container and then killing themselves, not for gas exchange?

Great observation. I suppose there are several good reasons to have an air pump for indoor culturing. The cells need exposure to light, & keeping the water in constant motion does prevent them from settling. It will also infuse CO2. My theory is that wind will provide sufficient surface agitation to stir the culture outdoors. I should know in a few weeks.

 

[R.Weller]

Can you tell me what your original failure was with phytoplankton indoors?

I am currently growing out 10 gallons of phytoplankton every week, which I started originally from a 8-ounce culture that I bought from my lfs. I'm using some LED grow lights and the Mercer of Montana fertilizer.

10gal is quite the enterprise! Well done.

My previous indoor attempts failed because I lacked some basic knowledge on the subject before jumping in. Watching a few short YouTube videos & a quick read of the phyto sticky thread here on R2R didn't work this time. That's a pattern that I seem to repeat frequently in this hobby. Here's a summary of the reasons my past attempts failed:

• Failure to properly research
• Using the wrong seed (Algae from our turf scrubber...wrong type of algae)
• Using the wrong seed (Seachem phytoplankton...it's dead algae & will not reproduce)

Tonight we will harvest our second indoor culture. It's nice to have back-to-back wins after a few months of learning what not to do.

 

[mav3rick478]

Great observation. I suppose there are several good reasons to have an air pump for indoor culturing. The cells need exposure to light, & keeping the water in constant motion does prevent them from settling. It will also infuse CO2. My theory is that wind will provide sufficient surface agitation to stir the culture outdoors. I should know in a few weeks.

I'm interested to see if just wind works because then maybe I can try growing some in our backyard on top of one of the cement planters

 

[creativeballance]

10gal is quite the enterprise! Well done.

My previous indoor attempts failed because I lacked some basic knowledge on the subject before jumping in. Watching a few short YouTube videos & a quick read of the phyto sticky thread here on R2R didn't work this time. That's a pattern that I seem to repeat frequently in this hobby. Here's a summary of the reasons my past attempts failed:

• Failure to properly research
• Using the wrong seed (Algae from our turf scrubber...wrong type of algae)
• Using the wrong seed (Seachem phytoplankton...it's dead algae & will not reproduce)

Tonight we will harvest our second indoor culture. It's nice to have back-to-back wins after a few months of learning what not to do.

Good luck with the harvest! I'm thinking to get a microscope soon so I can verify my culture's integrity - I see that it looks like phyto, but I'm hoping to verify what type I have, I think it'll be a good learning experience for me and the kiddos.

For anyone else interested, I'm using this light for my 10 Gallon tank:

They are taped directly to the tank sides - 2 on one side, 1 on the other.

 

[R.Weller]

The purpose of this thread is outdoor culturing, & it remains the goal to harvest phyto & zooplankton using nothing more than sunlight & wind. Yet as with most things, the journey to the destination is part of the story. So here's another progress report...

We need about 1gal (128 oz) of live phyto to properly seed the tub for outdoor culturing & leave enough in reserve to avoid buying it again. At a cost of $27 for 32 oz of phyto (+12oz F2), it seemed that the best approach to get to 128oz was to grow it indoors. Our first indoor culture (designed to prove that we had sufficient knowledge to accomplish it) was to use 4oz of the precious green-gold live phyto & grow 12oz. We accomplished this on 19-May above. The next step in the process was to grow 36oz using the same methods. The culture finished successfully yesterday.

This added another 24oz to our cultures for a total of 80oz. The overall cost is now at $.34 / oz (USD). The original cost / oz was $.56. Before that, we have been dosing using Seachem phyto & last purchased a 2L on 28-Feb for $34.72 from Amazon or $.51 / oz. At over 400gallons & following the recommended phyto dosing, our system will consume 100ml / day. There are many more important things to accomplish on this planet that can be done for $1 / day, so economics is a big driver.

Now that we had two successful cultures, we made some observations. During the process, it was observed that I was misreading the units on the syringe that came with the F2. Considering my experience & profession, it was a comical mistake. The first culture was successful, but with only about 1/3 of the recommended fertilizer. As with the first, the second culture was sourced exclusively from the starter culture & this time using the full recommended amount of F2.

Now that we had over 40oz of phyto to use as starter cultures, we had to make some modifications to our indoors harvesting station to accommodate the volume. We ordered a splitter kit earlier in the month in anticipation of needing to use multiple vessels. We've setup the 3rd, & hopefully final, indoor culture before moving this show back outdoors. I do expect we will be using this setup again during the winter months.

On a side note, the recommended temp for culturing is 78 degF. Having the bottles standing on a platform in the refugium keeps them between 79 & 80 degF along with the rest of the system.

There are two 64oz juice bottles that were cleaned with white vinegar & rinsed with RO water. The bottle on the left is slightly darker & contains all the remaining seed from the Mercer product. The bottle on the right is a mix of the entire culture from 19-May, plus some product from our second culture. Considering the mistake in F2, it's expected to be lighter. This leaves us with another 24oz that we are storing in the fridge to feed the livestock & further split the culture as required.

Next update in 8 days when this finishes & the production moves outside. Unless everything falls apart & we get to try again...

 

[hawkbait]

I'm highly interested in the progress of this experiment!

 

[R.Weller]

Another long update, but we achieved an important milestone this week, so hopefully this is useful.

I have learned a great deal more from this project than I expected.

• Can we grow our own live foods? Yes.
• It is easy? Yes.
• Could I be successful without doing research? Perhaps.
• Will I be successful if I have a hyper-clean environment (ultra-low nutrients) & don't use the experience from the community & proper source materials? Doubtful.

For those attempting their own cultures, I highly recommend a small amount of reading first. Here are some links to online resources that I have used over these last 4 weeks.

/******************************************************************************/
Culturing Phytoplankton

Documents:

Step by Step (SaltwaterAquariumBlog.com)
https://www.saltwateraquariumblog.com/home-cultures-phyto-rotifers-copepods/phytoplankton-culture/

Dosing Phytoplankton in a Marine Aquarium (SaltwaterAquariumBlog.com)
https://www.saltwateraquariumblog.c...ds/dosing-phytoplankton-in-a-marine-aquarium/

Phytoplankton Dosing & Storage (Poseidon Reef Systems)
https://poseidonreefsystems.com/p/dosing-information

YouTube:

Mad Hatter’s Reef – 16oz bottles w/ air tubing


Display Feeding Volume:
5ml / 10gal x3 / week

/******************************************************************************/

Culturing Copepods

Documents:

The Breeder’s Net: A Simple How-to On Home Culture Of Copepods
https://reefs.com/magazine/the-breeder-s-net-a-simple-how-to-on-home-culture-of-copepods/

Copepod Culturing
https://www.aquaticlivefood.com.au/copepod-culturing/

Feeding Volume:
Based on coloration of the culture (target is to keep the water light green).
/******************************************************************************/

Now for the progress report...

Our two 60 oz cultures developed & were harvested although we had an unexpected result in one of the vessels. Here's the progression.

A closeup of the phyto that clustered with a few observations:

And the results using before/after on the vessels:

With that, our stock continues to grow. The overall cost is now at $.18 / oz (USD). In fairness, we have had an airpump running for the last 3 weeks, so it's not a true cost but it certainly demonstrates that live phyto is the way to go vs other commercial options.

And with that stock, we took the plunge & moved the vast majority of our production back outdoors. We reserved enough to continue to target feed a few of the animals in our display & also restarted another indoor culture just in case the outdoor experiment fails miserably.

With no observable animal life in our existing cultures, we discarded the contents & sterilized (rinsed with white distilled vinegar) the tubs. The 'light' phyto became the initial feeding for our zooplankton tub & the dark is the 2:1 concentration of phyto to RO.

I think our previous attempts at zooplankton failed due to a lack of nutrition. If phyto is the building block of the aquatic food chain, it's unlikely to be successful without using this from the beginning.

Another update in 8 - 10 days as this grows.