got ethical husbandry?

Tank Food Production

Gorm

Guest
Does anyone produce there own phytoplankton, rotifers, etc? I have phytoplankton coming out my ears, but my inital batch of rotifers crashed. Looking for a new "seed" quanity and tips on production. If ya need green water I am your guy.

Gorm
 
Care to post a How-To on your phyto and rotifer culturing set up? Sounds interesting, but I have no idea where to begin, what's important, or what's practical.
 
yep thats me... I have yet to produce roti's but am still looking for a seed quantity. As far as phyto I will post a picture of mine
DSC01028.jpg

DSC01029.jpg

DSC01027.jpg

DSC01026.jpg
 
Cool Dan! Thanks for the starter phyto too, I've got a very similar set up to yours, though it's more ad hoc. It's two 2 litre coke bottles (like yours) that sits in front of a desk lamp which is fitted with a "curly" compact fluourescent bulb. It's on a timer that give it 16 hours of light, and 8 hours of darkness (according to Melev's website).

I only had small air pumps sitting around and had it on a "splitter" but something weird happened and one bottle wasn't getting any air, and there was a bunch of dead phyto or something on the bottom of that bottle, so I am using 2 air pumps now, one in each bottle. Just real simple airline from pump to the bottom of the bottle.

Any idea what species of phyto we are growing? ;)

I'm really glad it works with RO water too (rather than salt water) as it makes it much easier to dose.

Mine don't seem nearly as densly green as yours does. How long have they been "brewing"?

What's your light cycle? And how much miracle-gro are you feeding them? I mix like about 1/4 teaspoon in RO water and split between the two bottles.

Thanks again for the starter stuff, I hope to get mine as nice and dense as yours! (Though I might need more lighting then, I suppose!)

What I'd actually like to do is some how set up a phyto station/shelf right behind my open backed canopy, which leaks MH light like crazy and see if I can get it to grow well there. I mean, it's wasted light, right?

V
 
I have my lights on a similar setting as far as lighting, obviously I have more light. Depending on the abundance of various things, will depend on how quickly you achieve a dark green. These are maybe a week old, since my last cut, basically I drain a 1.5 cups total from each bottle and refill with fertile water every other day I haven't taken a cut from these bottles in several days, I am trying some new feeding methods for my corals. I might try expierementing with the addition of CO2, but I have no problem keeping up with a good supply, so who knows. Right now I am using some phyto food I bought, but as soon as this runs out I will switch to miracle gro. I believe they are Nanochloris. And I think you plan is great for ustilizing the light from your tank, plus it would be really easy for feeding, mebbe a 5 gal water jug premixed with RO and fertilizer sitting on top that would essentually keep you bottles full when you drained some off, heck you could even get a automatic system for feeding!
 
Back
Top