Zinn Plankton Reactor

[lmeyer]

I have been thinking about culturing my own phyto and zoo plankton. Going broke buying the stuff in the stores. Have been online and seen some plans for DIY reactors, but found the Zinn reactor online and am really interested.

 

I have been in contact with the manufacturer, but they are not selling the reactor in the states yet. May try to do it DIY, but looking to see if anyone is interested in trying it out w/ me. Haven't figured out everything they are doing from the pictures yet, but I'm working on it.

 

Zinn reactor info:

http://www.saunalahti.fi/~haaga/Tekniikka/107-0766_img.htm

http://www.reefonline.com.au/shop/product_...products_id=234

 

Larry

[Guest condiman]

It looks quite interesting I may go alone with ya to see how it works.

[xeon]

Looks like a potential "easier way" to culture rotifers, which interests me. The daily feedings are the downside to me culturing rotifers currently.

 

Looking at the design it appears there is some sort of mesh in the circles on the partition. I imagine this mesh is fine enough to keep the rotifers in their side... but does it somehow meter flow of the phyto? Next thought is, what is the signifigance of the green tubing to the partition+box. What is the box?

 

It might be a long shot... but German E-bay has the item. It's listed somewhere around $90. My German stinks, but I don't think they mention shipping out of country. Go to ebay.de and search for "plankton reaktor". Shipping it over seas might create issues with the cultures mortality, but the device is what interests me.

[Lee Stearns]

I agree xeon I thought the device looked to be interesting with the key technology being the screen material that allows phyto plankton to flow to the rotifers and the rotifers waste to flow back to feed the phyto. I would be concerned with haveing to break down the system to clean the screen on a regular baisis. You know how quickly the seive screen gets clogged when trying to screen out the rotifers for feeding. I would think some kind of overpressure on the phyto side might keep the flow going. But would want to see more feedback on people actually using this- It looks rather simple to build if you had the sceening material. On another note my experience has been that if there is even the remotest chance a rotifer or rotifer egg can get to your phyo culture and contaminate it -a mear splash of one drop and the phyto culture is doomed to become a great rotifer culture in only a few days- So the set up looks to be too easily cross contaminated.

[xeon]

Lee, you hit on one key point. From your experiences alone I was already thinking about the possibility of contamination. I imagine one stray rotifer would become many happy rotifers in short order. One would certainly have to take care in harvesting rotifers. I was thinking a ball valve on the side might be a good way to harvest rotifers without going in from the top and creating a scenario of drips going "places".

 

I e-mailed a guy who has one. I think he said he got it off of German E-bay for a song with some other equipment. He also stated he is currently setting himself up to be the distr. for the product in the US. On top of that he is sending me several pictures around the end of the week. They should prove interesting.

 

Informative part of his reply below: (some grammatical errors)

"its really hard to explain how the work but one tube is connected th small box with ten inside (if some rottifers will get to plankton chamber this will catch them).  on other is connected to air pump on timer and it deliver plankton to rotifer chamber.  if you are interested in zinnreactor soon i will be distributor of zinn reactors in usa."

 

FWIW, I think Florida Aquaculture sells different meshes... or maybe it was somewhere else I saw them.

[craby]

I'd be interested in one of these. Maybe we can get a real one and DIY duplicate it, if we can't get design details for DIY.

[xeon]

I still don't have pics from the guy, but I think I'm figuring it out from the pics in the links above. I may bug him mid-week if I haven't received anything.

 

One question I had was what are the green tubes going to the box and divider. First I came to the conclusion there is no pump since it isn't listed as included or needed. Of the listed items of accessories to the item, an air pump is one of them.... why you say? Because both of these tubes are air lift pumps. It is basically a way to pump water without a pump using air bubbles to reduce specific gravity of the water via aeriating it. The water in the tube would be lighter and theoretically rise... and pump.

 

Sounds good, no moving parts to mess anything up aside for turbulence. I know nothing about air lift pumps outside of the theory of operation. It sounds rather simple though.

 

Of the two pipes, the one to the divider is to feed phyto to the rotifer culture. I think you would put this on a timer to run "x" time/s a day for "x" amount of time. The other I believe is a rotifer catcher that runs non stop. In my opinion the bottom of the box is a fine mesh (53u?) to catch stray rotifers in the phyto side. I also think it serves as source of movement for the phyto culture.

 

I am not sure what the mesh is between the two chambers. The finest I was able to find was 5u, but the smallest cells of Nanochlopsus (sp?) aka Japanese Chlorella is in the 4-6u range.

 

As Lee noted the rotifer waste is fuel for the phyto, but I'm not sure about what mesh could be used there. You could probably get by by using f/2 and eliminating the screen. It would add to maintenance IMO though.

 

What say you?

[lmeyer]

Haven't done much work trying to figure out the schematics/workings lately.

 

I have e-mailed Thomas Zinn, the designer. He didn't have a way to ship them to the U.S., didn't recommend shipping them. At my request, he said they could possibly sell/ship the inserts into the tank along with instructions and I could install it into a tank I got here. I have e-mailed him back asking how he would like to proceed with this.

 

Xeon is right, from what I have seen on the web, the mesh between the dividers is a plankton sieve. The green tubes are air lift pumps. I believe that I saw that they also had plankton sieves to prevent cross contamination. I'm looking forward to seeing the info he gets from the person who has one.

 

The only other places I have found with info about them are:

 

http://www.saunalahti.fi/~haaga/Tekniikka/107-0766_img.htm (images of a working reactor including documentation of some type of crash) - found from http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-06/totm/ (same system as highlighted in reefkeeping mag).

[lmeyer]

A little additional info:

 

Heard back from Thomas Zinn/ZC Aquarientechnik (the German sellers). They will sell the parts for about 50 Euros (about $65) plus shipping. I will probably buy it, but will need to know how much for shipping before I do.

[lmeyer]

A little additional info:

 

Heard back from Thomas Zinn/ZC Aquarientechnik (the German sellers). They will sell the parts for about 50 Euros (about $65) plus shipping. I will probably buy it, but will need to know how much for shipping before I do.

[xeon]

Ok, I got the pics which I will upload into an album today hopefully. Nothing fancy though.

 

*Edit: http://dsstel.com/culture/index.htm

 

From the looks of the pics it looks like it comes as a kit. End user supplied items are air pump, light and tank... am I wrong? Anyway, looks pretty simple to build, I just wonder what mesh is used between the chambers. My assumption is it should filter around 5 microns to prevent the phyto from going cross lots, keep the rotifers at bay while letting roti-waste into the phyto side.

 

The price doesn't sound too bad, I just think I might be able to make exactly what I want. In speaking with Florida Aquaculture, they suggested maybe using a womens slip as it resembles 5 micron mesh material closely. For the rotifer catcher box, 53 micron would be sufficient.

[lmeyer]

Pics are helpful. I'll wait to see how much the shipping is. I went to FedEx, UPS, and DHL websites to try to estimate shipping. Looks like that may be a problem, was getting quotes of 50 to 100 euros for shipping. I'll wait to see what the manufacturer quotes, but I won't pay that much on top of the cost of the parts. If I wind up getting it (and get it in time) I'll bring it to the Spring Meeting.