Phyto strains

Gtinnel

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Around 2 months ago I bought a phyto blend and started using it to grow my own phyto. With it being a blend I’m sure one type of phyto has out competed the others and I don’t know which species it is. So I am planning to start from new single species cultures.
For those of you who grow your own what species do you prefer to grow for your tank. I am considering growing multiple species but would like to limit it to just a few different species. I just read an article from Algae Barn but would like to get others inputs as well.
 

Zach B

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Thats who I bought my original mix from. His product is great but I want to try my hand at just culturing my own.
Oh ok for sure! Best of luck again :)
 

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I am by no means an expert in phytoplankton but I have started down the journey of culturing my own and have focused on single strain cultures. I currently have Tetraselmis, Nannochloropsis, and Isochrysis in the below picture and I plan to see what works best for me.
B3149D0A-F598-4C61-8218-C4001DD7BF82.jpeg

The scientific literature seems to indicate that a blend of Isochrysis and Tetraselmis results in the best dietary balance and supports copepods most effectively but I am still going to experiment.

To your point though, the general thought is that blends that include Nannochloropsis will eventually become pure Nanno since that genus easily outcompetes others. If your culture has turned a deep emerald green that would support this theory.

Todd Gardner’s MACNA talk was particularly interesting on the topic of Phyto.
 
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I am by no means an expert in phytoplankton but I have started down the journey of culturing my own and have focused on single strain cultures. I currently have Tetraselmis, Nannochloropsis, and Isochrysis in the below picture and I plan to see what works best for me.
B3149D0A-F598-4C61-8218-C4001DD7BF82.jpeg

The scientific literature seems to indicate that a blend of Isochrysis and Tetraselmis results in the best dietary balance and supports copepods most effectively but I am still going to experiment.

To your point though, the general thought is that blends that include Nannochloropsis will eventually become pure Nanno since that genus easily outcompetes others. If your culture has turned a deep emerald green that would support this theory.

Todd Gardner’s MACNA talk was particularly interesting on the topic of Phyto.

Thanks for the reply.

Yes my culture is now about the same color as the culture in the center of your setup. Also when I first started culturing it I would get some stuff at the bottom of my container that I assumed was certain strains dying off.

I will probably just keep the culture I have going and add in cultures of isochrysis and tetraselmis. Those seem to be the three that I hear about the most.
 

Aqua Man

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I will probably just keep the culture I have going and add in cultures of isochrysis and tetraselmis. Those seem to be the three that I hear about the most
I brewed Nanno a few years ago and want to start again. Where are you going to purchase the cultures? Interested in the Iso and Tertra cultures also.
 

chimbo84

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I brewed Nanno a few years ago and want to start again. Where are you going to purchase the cultures? Interested in the Iso and Tertra cultures also.
I got mine from eBay. The Tetraselmis culture I bought as a 50mL sample that I bloomed up over two runs into the 1500mL ball jar that you see in my picture. The nanno and iso I bought as 16oz live cultures also from eBay.

Tetraselmis : https://www.ebay.com/itm/3638534916..._QpfweiSZq&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Nannochloropsis:

Isochrysis:
 

chimbo84

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Thanks for the reply.

Yes my culture is now about the same color as the culture in the center of your setup. Also when I first started culturing it I would get some stuff at the bottom of my container that I assumed was certain strains dying off.

I will probably just keep the culture I have going and add in cultures of isochrysis and tetraselmis. Those seem to be the three that I hear about the most.
Yeah, Rhodomonas is another popular one in addition to some strains of pelagic diatoms. You may want to consider getting a microscope as well since that will help identify what strains you’re working with. My Isochrysis culture is already turning green and I looked at it this morning and can tell that it’s contaminated with Nanno.
 
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Gtinnel

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I brewed Nanno a few years ago and want to start again. Where are you going to purchase the cultures? Interested in the Iso and Tertra cultures also.
I was planning on buying it from eldredge. I have ordered his blend a few times and he is a great seller. I just want to try growing my own.
 
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Gtinnel

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@Eldredge will sell single species also, just an FYI. He's also a great guy to pick his brain on growing.

Nanno, and tetra are the easiest and most forgiving to grow out.
I’m just trying to figure out the advantage of specific species. I’d like to keep my setup to growing no more than 4 species because of space.
 

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I’m just trying to figure out the advantage of specific species. I’d like to keep my setup to growing no more than 4 species because of space.
Yeah, my understanding is that any blend that you buy will be created by blooming up genus specific cultures and combining them into the end product. Trying to culture from a blend will always result in one genus taking over (usually nannochloropsis). It may take a few runs to get there but it’s generally not advised to try culturing from a blend. There are even some posts here from the Reef Nutrition guys that state you shouldn’t culture their products because they’re blended.
 
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Gtinnel

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Yeah, my understanding is that any blend that you buy will be created by blooming up genus specific cultures and combining them into the end product. Trying to culture from a blend will always result in one genus taking over (usually nannochloropsis). It may take a few runs to get there but it’s generally not advised to try culturing from a blend. There are even some posts here from the Reef Nutrition guys that state you shouldn’t culture their products because they’re blended.
Yep my plan is to grow them separate and just combine them into the bottle I dose from.
 

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Fun fact, phycopure copepod blend from liveaquaria is chaetoceros (diatom), and t-iso.
When i culture it up, i would get pure t-iso. Except 1 time out of 10 it cultured up pink rhodomonas instead.
 

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I came across this interesting article last night. Basically, it explores the hypothesis that typical culturing methods (light with air bubbling) are light bound. The argument here is that as cell density increases it blocks the light more and more and you eventually reach a plateau where the culture cannot continue to divide because it is already blocking the light from penetrating into the culture.

To remedy this, the authors added a source of organic carbon and found that the addition of 25-50mmol of glycerol (aka., glycerine/glycerin) resulted in a 2x improvement in cell density and growth rate for T-Iso when combined with the typical light and bubbling method of growth. I am going to experiment with this and start a new thread about it but I think this could be really useful since we often have organic carbon sources handy from vodka and vinegar dosing.

FYI, 50mmol of glycerine equates to roughly 4.6g of glycerine per 1L of culture so its a pretty small addition for such a dramatic improvement. Most of the benefit was observed at half that concentration as well so even just 2.5g of glycerine should provide a drastic boost to productivity.

@Randy Holmes-Farley have you seen this research before? Any hesitations on potentially adding surplus glycerine to our reef tanks?
 
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taricha

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I don't see why you'd need to, unless you were doing it on commercial scale.
Once going, your phyto supply will far outstrip any use you can have for it. It also is plenty capable of stripping the growth media of essentially all P and N. And increasing the density of the phyto culture wouldn't make it more stable.
plus an organic carbon addition to a media with N & P would increase the chance you'd grow something other than your target phyto.

Those are my thoughts. I was never great at phyto cultures so, feel free to ignore and try it out. Let us know how it goes.
 

chimbo84

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I don't see why you'd need to, unless you were doing it on commercial scale.
Once going, your phyto supply will far outstrip any use you can have for it. It also is plenty capable of stripping the growth media of essentially all P and N. And increasing the density of the phyto culture wouldn't make it more stable.
plus an organic carbon addition to a media with N & P would increase the chance you'd grow something other than your target phyto.

Those are my thoughts. I was never great at phyto cultures so, feel free to ignore and try it out. Let us know how it goes.
These are all great points. I suppose my ultimate goal is to leverage the increased growth rate indicated in the paper so that I can stop storing phyto in my refrigerator and condense the culturing timeline from nine days down to five or six and use smaller containers at the same time.

My initial test will be to recreate their results using standard f/2 nutrient concentrations since they don't mention having to supply additional nutrients. Assuming I get good results with that, I will explore using f/1 concentrations and see if anything changes from there. It would be nice to support my tank's needs with just 250mL culture vessels and have it bloom in half the time.
 

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