Shall i build a Phytoplankton "Farm" at home?

[friendlyguy]

Hi Gents!
I`ve been thinking about building a small farm to grow Phytoplankton for our Reeftanks at home.
We`ve got quiet some volume of saltwater here, 3000 Liters of Saltwater: Over the thumb. (Its a bit more)

Why: We want to support the smallest lifeforms in our reeftanks with proper food: namely phytoplankton.
All those tiny critters that live in the sand and rockwork.
And of course: we probably all try to mimic the oceans as good as possible and i believe that plankton is a big part of it.

My problem with buying plankton off the shelf is: the amount we require isn't affordable any more.
We require about 3L of plankton every day, and 1 liter is around 11 Bucks here.
Do the math: we are looking at 30 Bucks per day! Thats roughly 12k a year.

Note: When I say we require X Liters a day, this is just me following product instructions printed on some website.
Those instructions vary from vendor to vendor, but they are all in the ballpark of 70-100 ml per 100 Liter a day and thats how i came up with that number.

Sooo looking at the numbers this lead my to the conclusion: I need to do something different.
Either grow my own Plankton or find a affordable replacement Product. I don't know, maybe some concentrate or something.

Ultimatively: I don't want to spend more than 100 bucks on plankton a month. Either bought or self grown.
Is that realistic to achieve? I dont know. Thats just what i'd like things to be

Is anybody here that grows plancton like that?

I mean, i believe its really a challenge to grow plancton on your own and do it right:
- No contamination, i believe i read about some disease that can spread through plankton. (vibrio?)
- proper "sterilization" ... or probably more likely: pasteurization techniques.
- Get the right "strains"
- get the dosing of fertilizer right so i don't pollute our tanks
- keep a constant production
- when to harvest

So, i think its not a project that is done once one gets a reactor and some starter cultures.
Its about having/ establishing the right procedures and using the stuff right.
This starts when sizing the reactor, whether to have multiple reactors, having "primary cultures" that are known good in the fridge.

So, i am looking for people who have done that successfully and are willing to give me tips and advice on that journey.
And of course, if you can: Please help me decide whether its worth going down that road.

As always: Happy reefing everybody!

 

[Eric R.]

You might want to check out this product/setup for culturing phytoplankton. I'm going DIY personally, but if you have the budget for an off-the-shelf setup, I think this might work well for your needs and be far cheaper in the long run.

Poseidon Reef Systems

poseidonreefsystems.com

 

[PeterC99]

Start growing your phytoplankton today! Easy, cheap, and your aquarium will thrive! My only advice is to rub rubbing alcohol all over your hands when transferring.

I never turn off my light (cheap Home Depot grow light), and just use the saltwater from my water changes to refill the containers. Ready for collection weekly. Only keep 10% of phytoplankton when I refill. This is my cheap setup:

 

[friendlyguy]

Thanks for sharing your setup with me.
Its very interesting that you use water from your tanks for your culture.
From what i`ve read so far thats uncommon. People advice against it because you are introducing zooplankton to your cultures and probably other things that might contaminate your production.
Did you analyse your plankton under a microscope to verify its still what you intend to be growing?
Two sources of wisdom i found useful:
- https://shellfish.ifas.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/Phytoplankton-Culture-for-Aquaculture-Feed.pdf
-

Did you check how high your nutrient levels are in your cultures?

Our reeftanks run on pretty low P04 and No3 and i dont want to skyrocket them.
For me: Po4 < 0,05 mg/l and No3 <5 mg/l is where i am aiming at in my reeftanks.

How did you determine the required dose of fertilizer?

 

[PeterC99]

Sorry for the confusion. I should have wrote clearer.

I have a water change station and I use the freshly made saltwater to refill my phytoplankton when harvesting (PPT 35).

I don’t chase numbers. Find that the live phytoplankton actually helps me keep NO3 & PO4 down.

I don’t measure, just pour a little bit of fertilizer in when I make a new batch.

 

[Dave-T]

You might want to check out this product/setup for culturing phytoplankton. I'm going DIY personally, but if you have the budget for an off-the-shelf setup, I think this might work well for your needs and be far cheaper in the long run.

Poseidon Reef Systems

poseidonreefsystems.com

I echo the suggestion for the Poseidon product. Definitely more expensive than DIY, but it’s pretty slick.

 

[MBruun]

I've been dosing around the same amount of phyto per liter for the last two years, but only having a total volume of 700 liter, and I'm super happy having a DIY setup. It saves me lots of money in the long run.
I started out with smaller phyto containers, but it require a lot of work. Now I have a continous culture with like 16 liter of phyto dosing 840 ml/day. The container is cleaned with a brush twice a week (2 min work) and properly cleaned every 2-3 months. Super easy with minimal work

 

[Dave-T]

I've been dosing around the same amount of phyto per liter for the last two years, but only having a total volume of 700 liter, and I'm super happy having a DIY setup. It saves me lots of money in the long run.
I started out with smaller phyto containers, but it require a lot of work. Now I have a continous culture with like 16 liter of phyto dosing 840 ml/day. The container is cleaned with a brush twice a week (2 min work) and properly cleaned every 2-3 months. Super easy with minimal work

Wow! That's a lot of phyto! My system volume is about twice yours, and I'm only dosing 100ml/day, which is about what most people seem to recommend. So you're dosing more than 15 times what I do! But I do wonder if it would be better to dose more.

And with the continuous dosing, don't you worry about fertilizer from your phyto culture getting into your tank and feeding algae growth?

 

[MBruun]

I slowely - 100 ml/week - raised the dose to let the aquarium adapt. Been struggeling with a little high values some months ago, so I increased the daily dose from 650 ml to 840 ml. Now my values are nice and low but I see no reason to decrease the daily dose, and it fit very well with the of size of the container.
When the amount of dose (phyto out / water in) and the overall amount in the container and the added fertilizer, fit with growth rate of the phyto, then the culture keep a nice dark green colour and have no foam on the surface. Hope it make sense

 

[RSNJReef]

So, I preface this by saying I do grow my own phyto, and, some things to think about:

start slow and simple. If you’ve never cultured before, start with tetraselmis first, then try nannochloropsis, then you can try something like iso. Tetraselmis is pretty forgiving, so for most of the mistakes that happen, it stands a good chance of recovering.

don’t freak out if your phyto turns white when you start your first culture, just turn the lights down a bit, give it a little more fertilizer, and leave it alone. Any organism, copepods and phyto, needs time to add just to your systemso the close calls will usually happen with a starter culture because it’s learning to adjust to your setup. If your culture begins to turn brown or yellow though, that’s when you need to act fast and setup a new culture.

set up your sterilization protocols up front, and make sure you’re before big very careful/ cleaning your hands thoroughly if you’re harvesting from multiple species a day. Best methods I’ve seen is to clean your containers then sterilize both the culture water and the culture vessels together as a system before using it because that will reduce the possibility of you introducing bacteria when transferring in water.

make sure your cultures are either far enough away from each other or have dividers between them so the airborne phyto (from popping bubbles), will not stray into another culture. Most people don’t realize this but that’s one of the main reasons for cross contamination, either, from your hands, your culture water, or airborne phyto from the popping of the bubbles.

put micron filters on your airlines to your culture vessels so that you’re not introducing particulates into your culture from the air.

also, use a good fertilizer, your phyto will only be as healthy as what you feed it,

 

[JTP424]

So, I preface this by saying I do grow my own phyto, and, some things to think about:

start slow and simple. If you’ve never cultured before, start with tetraselmis first, then try nannochloropsis, then you can try something like iso. Tetraselmis is pretty forgiving, so for most of the mistakes that happen, it stands a good chance of recovering.

don’t freak out if your phyto turns white when you start your first culture, just turn the lights down a bit, give it a little more fertilizer, and leave it alone. Any organism, copepods and phyto, needs time to add just to your systemso the close calls will usually happen with a starter culture because it’s learning to adjust to your setup. If your culture begins to turn brown or yellow though, that’s when you need to act fast and setup a new culture.

set up your sterilization protocols up front, and make sure you’re before big very careful/ cleaning your hands thoroughly if you’re harvesting from multiple species a day. Best methods I’ve seen is to clean your containers then sterilize both the culture water and the culture vessels together as a system before using it because that will reduce the possibility of you introducing bacteria when transferring in water.

make sure your cultures are either far enough away from each other or have dividers between them so the airborne phyto (from popping bubbles), will not stray into another culture. Most people don’t realize this but that’s one of the main reasons for cross contamination, either, from your hands, your culture water, or airborne phyto from the popping of the bubbles.

put micron filters on your airlines to your culture vessels so that you’re not introducing particulates into your culture from the air.

also, use a good fertilizer, your phyto will only be as healthy as what you feed it,

Recommendations of fertilizer? I'm failing in my own pursuit to find any easily...

 

[MBruun]

Recommendations of fertilizer? I'm failing in my own pursuit to find any easily...

I use F/2 fertilizer

 

[JTP424]

Hi Gents!
I`ve been thinking about building a small farm to grow Phytoplankton for our Reeftanks at home.
We`ve got quiet some volume of saltwater here, 3000 Liters of Saltwater: Over the thumb. (Its a bit more)

Why: We want to support the smallest lifeforms in our reeftanks with proper food: namely phytoplankton.
All those tiny critters that live in the sand and rockwork.
And of course: we probably all try to mimic the oceans as good as possible and i believe that plankton is a big part of it.

My problem with buying plankton off the shelf is: the amount we require isn't affordable any more.
We require about 3L of plankton every day, and 1 liter is around 11 Bucks here.
Do the math: we are looking at 30 Bucks per day! Thats roughly 12k a year.

Note: When I say we require X Liters a day, this is just me following product instructions printed on some website.
Those instructions vary from vendor to vendor, but they are all in the ballpark of 70-100 ml per 100 Liter a day and thats how i came up with that number.

Sooo looking at the numbers this lead my to the conclusion: I need to do something different.
Either grow my own Plankton or find a affordable replacement Product. I don't know, maybe some concentrate or something.

Ultimatively: I don't want to spend more than 100 bucks on plankton a month. Either bought or self grown.
Is that realistic to achieve? I dont know. Thats just what i'd like things to be

Is anybody here that grows plancton like that?

I mean, i believe its really a challenge to grow plancton on your own and do it right:
- No contamination, i believe i read about some disease that can spread through plankton. (vibrio?)
- proper "sterilization" ... or probably more likely: pasteurization techniques.
- Get the right "strains"
- get the dosing of fertilizer right so i don't pollute our tanks
- keep a constant production
- when to harvest

So, i think its not a project that is done once one gets a reactor and some starter cultures.
Its about having/ establishing the right procedures and using the stuff right.
This starts when sizing the reactor, whether to have multiple reactors, having "primary cultures" that are known good in the fridge.

So, i am looking for people who have done that successfully and are willing to give me tips and advice on that journey.
And of course, if you can: Please help me decide whether its worth going down that road.

As always: Happy reefing everybody!

Please update us with pics and progress on this! Really interested in how a large farm setup would look!

 

[Dave-T]

I slowely - 100 ml/week - raised the dose to let the aquarium adapt. Been struggeling with a little high values some months ago, so I increased the daily dose from 650 ml to 840 ml. Now my values are nice and low but I see no reason to decrease the daily dose, and it fit very well with the of size of the container.
When the amount of dose (phyto out / water in) and the overall amount in the container and the added fertilizer, fit with growth rate of the phyto, then the culture keep a nice dark green colour and have no foam on the surface. Hope it make sense

That makes sense, but if you are dosing out of the same container that you are actively growing phyto in, then you must be dosing some fertilizer into your tank. A coral farmer friend of mine strongly recommended against doing this, but it sounds like it works for you.

 

[RSNJReef]

Recommendations of fertilizer? I'm failing in my own pursuit to find any easily...

I agree with mbrunn, best bet is guillard’s f2 fertilizer (without silicates if culturing non-diatom algae, with silicates if you want to culture diatoms). You can get it off Amazon, I get mine from Mercer of Montana, they sell on Amazon.

 

[MBruun]

I use a standard 4-channel dosing machine scheduled for hourly dosing (except fertilizer)
- Phyto to tank 16:05 -> 03:05
- water to phyto 04:10 -> 15:10
- fertilizer 03:20
This way most of the fertilizer are consumed before dosing to the tank starts.

 

[Briansreef]

Starting my own up too. I am really feeling this is the missing link I need. When buying it I will often run out and go way too long without adding. So having phytoplankton on hand is the way to go. Easy and so beneficial.

 

[Dave-T]

I use a standard 4-channel dosing machine scheduled for hourly dosing (except fertilizer)
- Phyto to tank 16:05 -> 03:05
- water to phyto 04:10 -> 15:10
- fertilizer 03:20
This way most of the fertilizer are consumed before dosing to the tank starts.

That sounds awesome, in theory. If you can manage to dose the correct amount of fertilizer into the phyto container, then theoretically it will be all consumed by the time you dose the phyto. But if you overdose the fertilizer then it will accumulate and you'll end up dosing fertilizer into your tank, growing unwanted algae. And if you underdose the fertilizer, then either the phyto would get depleted, or it would die (I'm not sure which). You don't ever have any of these issues?

 

[MBruun]

It wouldn't take to see on the phyto culture if too much fertilizer are added, I think, and yes too little and the culture would slowely die out. It is possible that a little amount of fertilizer get into the tank, but I know that several people run a continous culture, so I don't think that is a big problem

 

[MBruun]

It wouldn't take long time....