Live food culture continued

[michaelg]

I'm sorry the original thread on my delving into live food cultures is lost, but thought I would pick it back up.

 

I have started the greenwater cultures.  The first phytoplankton came from Scott, who had aquired the culture from Mountain corals.  I am lacking a scientific name for this strain perhaps the same as the other, but until I know, I am treating them as if they are different.  This was started with about 48 ozs of dense culture.  I took this amount and did a 1:1  mix with fresh culture media (dense stock). For culture media, I am using IO salt mixed into 2 liters tap water (1.5 oz volume using measuring cup that comes with B-ionic) to give a SG of 1.017.  I add about 10 drops of a dechlorinator (am-quel) and 1 ml of micro-algae grow (Florida Aqua farms). The remainder of the phytoplankton went into another bottle at about a 1:5 dillution.  The dense stock culture has already peaked, and I have been taking from it and feeding the tanks and replacing volume with fresh media.

 

The second culture was a nanochloropsis culture that came on a gelatin plate from Florida Aquaculture supply.  I took about 5 mls of media and put in on top of the disk and let sit under mild illumination overnight.  The next morning, I scraped the cells with a q-tip and transferred to 1L of media, rinsing the plate to collect remaining cells.  I cultured this for 24 hrs, then brought it up to 2 liters.  These culture disks seem pretty easy to make and I may give it a try for backup cultures (they keep at least 6 months).  I am pretty sure they are a gelatin/salt water nutrient mix, which if the case, is real easy to make).

 

All the cultures are being grown in the basement, no heaters, on a stand that was modified from the reefkeepers magazine design- this took about 30 minutes to put together and can accomidate 10 2-liter bottles.  The thing I like about this design is that I do not need to hang lights on the wall (cement walls in the room) and it does not take up much space.  It forced me to clean up that corner of the room which needless to say made the SO happy  I am using a plastic closet type table with a piece of plywood on top for the table- gives room for the station and other ingredients/tools.  I am lighting it with 3 20W plant bulbs- 2 on the bottom and 1 on the top. The double shop fixture is fine on the bottom, but a shop fixture on the top posed a problem due to the weight and height.   I changed with out with a cheapo plastic fixture I was using on the refugium which is real thin and fits well on the top brace.  Good old duct tape holds it up there.  Fixture and bulbs from home depot- cost about $50 total.  Airation kinda strong, cotton plugs in the top of the bottles  (will start using filter floss for this), with output straight through a ridgid tube. Using a maxima dual output pump with each output going into a gang valve.  Plenty of power.  Next week I plan to check on the culture water parameters.

 

I plan to keep these going for the remainder of the month, and then in November start up rotifers from cysts.  I have 2 vials of cysts to try to get these going.  I plan to grow them in either a 5 or 10 gallon tank- still have not decided.  I am leaning towards a 10, as then I can use the 5 for clownfish larvae (smaller volume = more density of food for the little ones).  Still need to do some research on this though.

 

On a side note,  I started a new refuguim for the 10 gallon nano tank.  I should have it plumbed in in a couple weeks- it is currently in a 2 gallon acrylic box.  The live sand I picked up was rather rank initially (sulfides!!!) so it was rinsed through a couple times with salt water.  About 5 lbs of live rock in it and a heater.  Circulation by an open ended airline for now.  While the nano tank is happy in its current state, I feel this can only help by keeping more natural food in the system.  I have also put some montipora in this tank to see how they fair under 72 watts PC lighting.  I am using the thin branch brown/yellow and red digitatas.  

 

Pics to follow in the gallery in the next couple days.

 

Michael

[iceman]

Michael,

 

Glad to hear its going well with the cultures.  Let me know when you are ready to start rotifers.  I have a culture going now that is ready for harvest every 3 days.  I'd be happy to trade you something for a 2 liter bottle full.

 

One word of advice, get alot of bottles of phyto going.  Right now, I have 6 bottles of phyto and 2 for rotifers going at one time and find that I could use another 6 bottles just to be able to feed both the rotifers and my tank.  Its amazing how quickly they can wipe out a bottle of phyto.

 

Bob

[michaelg]

Bob- can you elaborate on how you know when to harvest the rotifers?  Do you count them?  I can bring a sample into lab and count them, but that would get rather tedious.  I saw the filter paper trick somewhere and know theres something in the clownfish book- or do you "eyeball" it?  How much and how frequently are you feeding them with the phyto cultures?

[iceman]

Its pretty easy to tell when they are ready for harvest.  You can actually see them in significant numbers.  

 

I have them in two 2-liter bottles.  After 3 days of feeding they are ready to harvest, so I put half a bottle of rotifers in one bottle and the other half in another bottle.  I take a full bottle of ready phytoplankton (grown 7 days) and top off the rotifer bottles.  

 

After 3 days, the rotifers have cleared out the phytoplankton (bottle is less green than when you started) and are ready to harvest.  I bought a 53-micron mesh collector that I pour the rotifers through.  This removes all the water and nutrients down the drain.  I then take the mesh collector and pour into into my tank.

 

Basically, I'm following Flame*Angel 's (from ReefCentral) directions from her website.  It describes growing phyto and rotifers in a simple, but effective manner. Here's the link:

 

http://www.sjwilson.net/reef

 

Bob

[michaelg]

This does seem an easier way to maintain the cultures rather than in a tank as I was planning.  Not sure this would give sufficient numbers to raise clown fry with, but sure would work good for tank feeding.

[iceman]

I just finished harvesting a bottle of rotifers tonight.  If you set up several bottles so that you could get a full bottle or two every night, you should have no problem having enough for fry.  I'm only using two bottles and I get a bottle to feed my tank every three days.

[dgasmd]

Are you planning on making enough cultures to sell a gallon here and there or is it just for personal consumption? I wouldn't mind  buying a couple of gallons of each a week if the price was fairly reasonable. This is something that is beyond my personal inclination to do.

 

Alberto

[iceman]

Alberto,

 

I'm doing it only for the good of my tank.  Its really not worth the trouble to try and make a little profit.  I'll be happy to trade some rotifers for an sps frag or two if someone wants a starter culture.  If you are looking to purchase some try roti-pods. http://www.roti-pods.com/ .  You can't beat their prices since it includes shipping.  Shelf life is only 7-10 days.

 

Bob

[michaelg]

Yeh- I'm thinking that will be about 6 bottles I need, in which case I should probably just use the 5 gallon tank.  I like the splitting method though, as it has a steady routine to it, and will probably start by doing it that way and then switch over to the bigger cultures when ready to try to raise the fry.

[michaelg]

Just for reference- I went back over Marini's article of phytoplankton, and I am fairly sure that the MC phyto I got from Scott is nanochloropsis.  This one is supposed to be real high in hufas.  I was hoping to have 2 different species, but guess I will make due with this one.  The cultures I started with a dense culture from scott are growing like crazy, and the ones started from the plate have finally reached a high density.  I am feeding about a liter a day now directly to the tanks.  I started brine shrimp last night and will try gut loading them with the phyto before feedign them to the tank as well.  November I should get the rotifers running.

 

I am currently using coke bottles, which have dimpled bottoms.  Does anyone know of a soda that has the round bottoms still?  In the dense cultures I am starting to see some settlement.

[michaelg]

Update on my phytoplankton cultures.

I have been having a problem with them as of late.  The cultures are yellowing.  I haven't had time to bring some in to take a look at them though to see if it looks like contamination or something else.  I wonder if the de-chlorinator I am using is contributing to the problem, or perhaps an improper amount of nutrients (micro-algae grow).  I have 2 new plates I am going to start some fresh culture from next week and will take some samples to get some pics of both the old and the new.  I also plan to make some disks myself from this new culture so that I can routinely start new cultures when needed (I will post the method after I am sure it works, though seems real similar to making a bacterial plate, and I have an autoclave I can use to etc to sterilize everything for the plates).

 

Michael

[michaelg]

I figured out the yellowing problem- it was from not splitting the cultures enough, and with enough frequency.  They became nutrient deprived.  I added some more nutrients to one of the bottles 2 days ago, and it is dark green again.  Guess I need to feed lots more phyto, or get the rotifer cultures going.  Bob- can I take you up on that offer now?  If you don't have some ready to go, I can work with some cysts I have.

 

Michael