Anthony Scholfield
Valuable Member
Thank you! I’m glad you found it helpful.
Preventing contamination when culturing phytoplankton
- Thread starter Elbereth
- Start date
- Tagged users None
Anthony Scholfield
Valuable Member
If this is working for you I say great. It isn’t something I would do myself or recommend to others though.
Using 99% alcohol is not ideal. It flashes off too fast and can leave behind unwanted things. You coating surfaces and leaving it capped for a day isn’t doing much more than trapping the evaporated fumes. The 99% will have flashed off in minutes. Also, rinsing with saltwater may introduce unwanted things depending on how you prepared your saltwater.
Just my personal opinion and experience, bit I think sanitation is greatly overrated in a small hobbyist setup.
Initially I followed the advice having everything extremely clean, preventing dust, etc. It was extremely rare for a culture to crash, but was quite a bit of work cleaning everything.
Now I use 64 Oz juice bottles(drink a lot of juice). When the juice is gone I give a 5 second rinse with tap water and into my stash they go. I use 6 of those for my cultures running. About every 5 days I take bubbler out of 4 of them, put cap on, and put in fridge for use. The other 2 get split between 4 more bottles and start again. I never clean a bottle or anything. After a month or so of of use I toss it out and use a new one.
I still very rarely ever have crashes. Even if I do no big deal since I running multiple bottles at once.
Initially I followed the advice having everything extremely clean, preventing dust, etc. It was extremely rare for a culture to crash, but was quite a bit of work cleaning everything.
Now I use 64 Oz juice bottles(drink a lot of juice). When the juice is gone I give a 5 second rinse with tap water and into my stash they go. I use 6 of those for my cultures running. About every 5 days I take bubbler out of 4 of them, put cap on, and put in fridge for use. The other 2 get split between 4 more bottles and start again. I never clean a bottle or anything. After a month or so of of use I toss it out and use a new one.
I still very rarely ever have crashes. Even if I do no big deal since I running multiple bottles at once.
Anthony Scholfield
Valuable Member
Yes, this can be effective. I’m glad it’s working for you. Just keep in mind that green water doesn’t always equal the phytoplankton you’re intending to culture. There are other things we want to keep out so better sanitation practices are used. Bad bacteria such as vibrio is one of them.
Anthony Scholfield
Valuable Member
It’s not just about crashes. It’s about keeping a clean phyto culture. Just cause it’s green doesn’t mean it’s a clean culture. Many other things could be in there such as harmful bacterias when more thorough sanitation isn’t done.
If it’s just you using it then that’s your choice but if you’re sharing it, well you may be sharing something unwanted. Just something to consider.
What makes my phyto cultures more prone to bacterial contamination than my saltwater aquarium which is also not sterile and has a lot of open space and not kept sealed to airborne contaminants? Its a lefitimate question there may be a good answer i am unaware of but they are kept at similar salinity and temperature. Is there something more to it?
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2020
- Messages
- 5,317
- Reaction score
- 9,451
Capped with high volatility is the point of 99%. I'm thinking the aerosol alcohol may sterilize better, getting to more surfaces for a longer time.
(Does not flash off if capped, still there the next day.)
What unwanted things could we be introducing with a fresh saltwater rinse?
I agree if it was not capped it wiuld be gone in minutes.
Similar threads
