How to avoid Phytoplankton crashes

[melev]

Any thoughts or suggestions? I can't believe how many cultures have gone down in flames in the past year. It is very frustrating. I took my last disc and started a batch on Monday night. Over the next couple of days it got nice and green. On Saturday, it was ruined!

Salinity 1.019
1 ml Micro Algae Grow
Nanoclorupsus disk
Temp stable at 79F to 80F
Lighting 16 hours a day
Gentle bubbling of air via rigid tubing in a 2-liter bottle.

[lego]

A related question: My rigid tubing seems to clog up with sediment (so that very little air comes out it), any easy ways to unclog it - how does everyone else deal with this?

[melev]

Soaking the tubing in vinegar water cleans them up nicely.

[FMarini]

Marc-
I'm not anthony so I'll keep my answer brief.
sorry to hear all your cultures are crashing, but phyto is relatively simple, in that they require, proper water, light and food, the reason they crash is becuz one of those needs are unmet. If the culture is reaching a good green coloration then crashing the next morning, then you might want to look at contanimation (like ciliates or bacteria), major ph swings in the cultures, or not enuf fertilizer.
can you attribute any of these problems to your culture? are you using unsterilized bottles, airline tubing, or water? what does you crashed cultured look like.

[melev]

It turns clear or opaque, and the bottle ends up with detritus at the base.

I don't sterilize the bottles, but I have rinsed them with hot wate and then even added some white vinegar to rinse them well. That didn't help.

One time I intentionally added 1.5ml of Micro Algae Grow to one bottle but not the rest, and it crashed within 3 days so my guess is that too much fertilizer causes the media to collapse.

I'm using a single 2' 6500K bulb. Perhaps I need two bulbs instead to double the lighting?

[rsman]

Im not anthony either what a shock i know

about 5 zillion articles have been writen on this subject and im sure you have read at least 1. there is a stickie on the breeders forum, and there are a number of such topics in the breeders forum if you are looking for more information.

also microwaving the full un oculated fertalized bottles does a good job of sterilizing them. run about 7mins for 2 L

[melev]

Guess I'll go check out the breeder's forum.

[manderx]

you can keep some in a small bottle in the fridge for a very long time to keep a backup so you don't need to restart off a starter-disk. i've restarted after a lazy spell with some after 6 months untouched in the back of my fridge. i guess since it's not as concentrated as DT's, it doesn't smother itself when you don't shake it every few days.

i never bother microwaving the water, but i do make sure nothing that has *ever* been in contact with tankwater touches the culture and i've never had a crash.

i'd try turning the bubble rate up. i've seen a few setups that didn't do too well because (in my opinion) there wasn't enough circulation.

[melev]

You know, I've read threads where it said to have one bubble per second, but I think the problem was my bubble rate was too slow in this last batch.

I do have a half bottle left in the fridge that I can try to work with, then I'm totally out.

[JB NY]

Marc, I can't believe your still having problems!

Do you mix up culture medium before hand? Do you add the F/2 to the culture medium or directly to the phyto bottles?

Dude, I've been doing this for like two years straight with hardly any crashes. Something's going on there. We'll figure it out.

[melev]

I could line out the entire sordid story, but the bottom line is that I've have had good batches last for weeks and months, and others that crash quickly. If I could figure out what I'm doing when things go wrong, I could stop it.

I've been adding 1 ml F/2 directly to each two-liter bottle, once they've been filled up with 1.019sg water. I have premixed my water at times, and other times mixed it up right when I needed some.

The soda bottles sometimes still smell of the drink that used to be in them. And I talked to one guy today and he told me he always reuses his bottles, where I'm always using new ones with each new split or new batch.

Ironically, I can keep a reef alive, but not the food...

[Armando]

I also never had a crash except once - the day i decided to refill the bottle with tank water, instead of newly mixed water.

[rsman]

im doing this as i think of all of the nice hints so itll be even more confusing than my normal posts

you can use tank water microwave it for even longer and use a little less f/2. using the microwave isnt the only way or even the best way, but its a good average

if your insane( ) or just wanna automate the process search for the H2O2 UV reactor thread in umm probibly the chem forum it should still have the pdf attached.

you might wanna make sure your not getting any soda in the mix, make sure the bottles are clean. sugar isnt great for cultures. also make sure you dont use an agressive soap to clean the bottles

you can use very little to start a culture itll grow kinda slow so add a small amount of f/2 2 or 3 times while the bottle matures

as it happens ocasionally try these things make sure you mix your f/2 before each use make sure its significantly seperate from any source of contamination, keep it cool but not frozen and in the dark.

keep your cultures away from your tank.

not sure i have the right person but are you still using a salt bucket or the likes to put your 2l bottles of algae in or something else?

and how many bottles do you culture??
if its less than 3 try more smaller bottles, you can actually get nice 1l bottles that are square doing so allows you to start several a day or 2 apart allowing 1 to crash with no issues. the smaller bottles on a 24" shelf with the light behind it takes up little room.

also do you have an air filter on your supply you should be using a .37 micron (note the less than 1micron that . is really there)

if you stick the cap on tight invert the bottle poke 2 1/4" holes in each umm ?lobe? for lack of a better word stick some cotton/filter floss in 1 and the airline in the other the airline can go into the cap and it creates a nice round bottom and a single air input which has gone thru your .37 micron filter. a cut bottom of another bottle filled with rock will make a nice stand

though many breeders have gone the way of IA or the likes those of us who have not are culturing more than you can imagine and have no leftovers and there is still plenty of information dating back to pre IA and the likes.


also when you do it over and over and have good luck often you might need to give us all the nasty story to see if anyone can catch the 1 item.

and just as a reminder
richard.reynolds@usa.net

[JB NY]

Marc, just for giggles do this the next time you culture a batch of phtyo.

Get an recently used and empty 2 gallon container of bleach. Rinse out the container well, a few minutes in warm tap water should be fine. Fill up the container with tap water (unless your water is horrible I get better result with tap than RO/DI). Add a little less than 1/2 cup of salt mix (I try for a SG of around 1.020). Then add 3ml of F/2. Shake the bottle up for about 30 seconds and let is sit at least 24 hours, 48 is better. This is your culture medium.

Use the water from the culture medium the next time you set up some phyto. See if it works. Also set up your bottle with the little piece of cotton as rsman explained. I use one 3/32" hole with a little wedge of cotton in.

When you run the air through the phyto culture, the bubbles should be fast but not fast enough to cause any real bubbling at the top. What I mean by that is, the water at the surface should be turbulent but nothing foamy should be seen.

FWIW, I have better luck starting with live phytoplankton than the disks.

[melev]

Okay, I'll give that a shot. And I've been using RO/DI water like I do for my tanks. Perhaps the water is too pure and the algae ends up starving.


2 more things:

Yesterday, I saw one guy's recipe included a 1/4 tsp of Baking Soda. Never heard of that before!

I have a single bulb lighting the phyto. Should it be a double bulb? See below.

[JB NY]

Not really sure if the two bulbs are needed. I do have them on my setup though.

[melev]

I do appreciate you guys trying to help me out. And to think I was asking Anthony Calfo... he's gotta be swamped with a million questions all things salty!

[Armando]

i only run 1 bulb as well. as far as food, i use 5 drops of the Micro Algae Food (aqua farms) per 2L bottle.

[WmTasker]

Hey there Marc It feels wierd trying to help you with one of your problems, since it has been you that has help me so much in the past.

Just my 2 cents. Turn up the air bubbles. Joyce Wilerson in the Clownfish Book suggest keeping the rate at 10-15 bps. Helps circulate and (most important) add CO2 for the phyto to use. If the culture gets to a certain point then craches, then it might just be using more CO2 than the low bubble rate can supply.

Re-use your old bottles. I would just put a capful of bleach and a few cups of warm water in the old bottles. Shake, rinse and sit upside down over night to dry. I would also soak the caps and 12 inch ridge tubing in a bucket of water and bleach. Rinse and dry. I bleach everything to clean in really good. Never had a problem, I usually just bleach, rinse and stick it back in the reef.

Hope it works out for you.

Billy

[melev]

Thanks Billy. I can't wait to restart and be successful with my cultures again. If so, I'll update my webpage with the successful combination of methods gleaned from this thread to help others harvest phtyoplankton effortlessly.

[thackray]

Melev,

I don’t know anything about phytoplankton culture but if you want to be precise about the CO2 in the culture bottle you can measure the pH. There is a precise relationship between the dissolved CO2, alkalinity and pH.

Phil Thackray

[rsman]

and im sure boomer will be glad to send you a zip with the tables and formulas to figure it out

though it doenst sound to me like a pH or CO2 problem those problems generally reflect slow growth not a crashed culture

[jpfelix]

what is your density reading the day before the crash?

i've found that increasing my bubble rate (usually within 15-20bps) helps. also, i feed my flasks (i love lab "access") every couple of days instead of one large feeding once a week. when i fed once/week i got more crashes. sometimes i think it was starvation, others may have been fertilizer burn.

for lights i have two 24' no bulbs, one on each side at the base of the flasks.

i have also had marginal success in keeping the salinity lower (1.015) if i know i will be neglecting the bottles.

no hard eveidence here, just my experience.

[Dwayne]

Originally posted by lego
A related question: My rigid tubing seems to clog up with sediment (so that very little air comes out it), any easy ways to unclog it - how does everyone else deal with this?

Try cutting the end of the tube at an angle.

FWIW

[melev]

The density meter reads 2cm when I have a good culture. And when I get a crash, you can probably see it way at the bottom of the container.

My guess is that I'm not allowing enough air to percolate my batch, and I'm not using tap water. All this time I've used Ro/Di water as that is almost always already pre-mixed saltwater. After adding a little more water to lower the salinity, I fill the bottles.

I've started one single bottle with a little bit of phyto I still had in the fridge, using some of the suggestions in this thread. I've got cotton in the breather hole (that wasn't easy!), it's bubbling a little more powerfully, and tap water was used.

I've not had a chance to buy the 2g bleach jug, Joe. I'll do that over the weekend so I can get things ready for the next batch (or split).