I have been researching culturing phyto at home. I understand the process and think I have a pretty good idea of setting up the equipment. My question is about nutrition.

The one concern I keep hearing is that Phyto cultured at home can lack the nutritional value of commercial Phyto. Now I plan to use DT's to seed my cultures. DT's is N. Oculata which contains the highest values of HUFAs, EPA, and low DHA. Aside from the perils of culturing the Phyto for too long and having the nutritional value go down, are their inherent problems with growing Phyto that would lessen the nutritional value?

Anyone doing this and have opinions?

I dont know near as much as you on the subject but was planning on growing my own someday as well.

If you do it, keep us posted.

Reef nutrition is going to be at the fall fest. All they do is grow & sell phyto so they might be a good source to ask some questions.

Great suggestion, and interestingly enough, their Phyto Feast product has been accused of the very problems I'm talking about. This is a very interesting study:

http://somas.stonybrook.edu/~MADL/p...growth.pdf

If I understand correctly, the basic problem is that with alot of Phyto products, the cells have already started to break down and offer very little of the actually nutritional parts of the plankton. It's the equivalent of a human eating fast food. Lots of "empty" calories.

My theory is that by starting with the highest quality available, I should be able to produce more of the same quality.

I didnt have time to read the article but I think that is why they have a very limited shelf life.

I used to grow my own phyto. It's relatively easy, but it's still a major pain in the ass and if you don't monitor it closely, it will crash causing you to start over again.

After talking to Ryan and a few others, I think I'm going to switch to carbon dosing. From what I can tell it should provide the same feeding benefits of dosing phyto while at the same time lowering the overall nutrient load of the system.

-JB

How can carbon dosing feed your corals & clams?

By dosing carbon, you are encouraging the growth of bacterioplankton which both chokes out nuisance algae and feeds the tank at the same time.

-JB

Wow I never heard of that. How do you dose it?

You can dose sugar or vodka, but I'm going to try "Brightwell Aquatics Reef BioFuel" which is the product that Ryan recommended to me and seems to be a bit safer from what I can tell.



You have to be careful not to overdose, or bad things can happen (I know, big surprise!).

-JB

In a round about way carbon dosing is the basis behind ULNS methods like Zeovit.

Phytoplankton is fun to grow once, but can be expensive to try to do long term. I used to do it while growing out clownfish fry, but if i try my hand at that again I will skip phytoplankton culturing as it was just too time consuming.

Now I've got a whole new method to study!

Now that's interesting to me. My hope was to save money. I'm spending about $40 a month on Phyto right now. Aside from the initial equipment, what do you see as the costs involved?

I was thinking only fertilizer and salt after the startup.

My whole system is to consist of a 48" dual florescent fixture, an air pump, some tubing and 2 liter bottles. A 10 gallon tank for pod reproduction as well.

Phyto cultures if kept completely sterile are cheap, but I have never found a way to keep things perfectly sterile and found I needed to restart my cultures fairly often. If not kept sterile a culture can quickly turn from phytoplankton to green cyano bacteria. They look similar and grow similar, but only one is good for your tank... I used bacterial filtration and still had to restart my cultures monthly to ensure quality. Monthly restarts mean at least one $12-$15 starter culture, new culture vessels, new airline, a new pump if the other was contaminated, fresh fertilizer... The biggest issue is time.

Here is an instuctional article on Carbon Dosing "Vodka" from a issue of Reefkeeping http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/index.php I am currently going to begin this.

I grow 8 2-Liter bottles of phyto a month off of 1 20W bulb and have had great luck with it for about a year. I don't know where you live Monkey Man but if you are in the area and want to stop by and see my setup just let me know.

I live in Davenport, but get up there from time to time. Thanks for the offer!