Phytoplankton

[Donya]

Hummm, maybe playing with the light spectrum for the phyto might encourage it and discourage teh bad stuff... What lamps are you using now to grow it?

Nothing fancy. It started growing under a 100W halogen desk lamp, which is what I've kept it under. Not sure of the bulb spectrum. About the only difference between what the phyto juts are getting vs. the tank is the light angle. The lamp illuminates a massive area since it's sitting up a ways, so the phyto jugs are just receiving light angled a tad vs. straight down (I'd probably cook the phyto if it was directly under). The phyto tank has plenty of other algaes growing on the rocks & such, but that hasn't put a dent in the phyto growing.

As for other lights, I have a spare fluorescent grow light & fixture. That's grown macro for me wonderfully in the past and never caused me issues with microalgaes, but it's not all that bright and is under half the wattage of the desk lamp, so I'm not sure how well phyto would take to that if I tried it.

 

[SkiFletch]

Well, halogens are actually pretty poor growlights, rarely the right spectrum as they're usually in the ~2500K range. I'd try something a little higher in the 5500K range. There's a lot of cheap flourescents available from home depot under the NVision name. Come in red, green, and blue packaging, some with the spotlight reflector design. I find the green and blue (5500 and 6500K respectively) great grow lamps.

Just thinkin out loud here

 

[Donya]

Well, halogens are actually pretty poor growlights, rarely the right spectrum as they're usually in the ~2500K range. I'd try something a little higher in the 5500K range. There's a lot of cheap flourescents available from home depot under the NVision name. Come in red, green, and blue packaging, some with the spotlight reflector design. I find the green and blue (5500 and 6500K respectively) great grow lamps.

Just thinkin out loud here

Will have a look for those at the local home depot and see if any of them out-wattage the spare growlight I've got. I think my spare may be the same sort as the ones you mentioned (came in those colors of packaging at home depot, the one I have was green). That light may get a test run with the phyto while I try to search for replacement desk lamp parts, since the rotten little glass plate on the halogen lamp cracked and a chunk of glass decided to drop out. The light still works, but the plate now has a big hole in it.

 

[chillaxin74]

Donya,
I was curious to know. If you don't have alot of need to constantly culture phytoplankton. However you have just enough to be annoying when it comes to the wallet. Can you freeze the cultures in very small ice cube trays for feeding later? Just pop a cube in so to speak. After typing that i just realized the answer is probably no. Seeing as how the phytoplankton is alive and wont be after it is frozen.

 

[Buddyboy67]

Simple phyto farm running almost 2 months now and harvested every 3 days under 24hr 10000K flourescent lighting. Fed everytime it is refilled with fresh salt mix after harvesing with 1 ml of over the counter phyto feed.........

Ran off an old air pump and an old light unit off an unused pico tank with 2 10000K t8 tubes that were burned out for marine use way back...

 

[Donya]

Donya,
I was curious to know. If you don't have alot of need to constantly culture phytoplankton. However you have just enough to be annoying when it comes to the wallet. Can you freeze the cultures in very small ice cube trays for feeding later? Just pop a cube in so to speak. After typing that i just realized the answer is probably no. Seeing as how the phytoplankton is alive and wont be after it is frozen.

The being dead side effect of freezing wouldn't be so much of a problem, since I had some condensed stuff that was in a gel and worked great (and it was obviously dead - had to keep it stored in the freezer). My problem with my own phyto was getting the concentration high enough to make storing it worthwhile and volume-efficient. I found that I could freeze a bottle, and then let it sit in the fridge overnight to get the dead phyto to settle a bit, but it wouldn't go any further than about halfway down. A centrifuge would work wonders and then I'd probably be able to reproduce the gel stuff, but alas...no equipment for that.

over the counter phyto feed

Which consists of...?


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EDIT: tags fixed I hope