Blake came by this afternoon and walked me through setting up my first culture of phytoplankton. Don't know what phyto strain it is, he cultured it from DT's. I will post updated pictures as it grows.
My culture is doing really well after only a couple of days. I have been manually turning the light on and off for a 16 hr photo period which has gotten really old fast, so I am off to Walmart to get a timer.
Did my first split today. I am going to have 4 cultures of Beanheads DT's growout and two known cultures from Normans for a total of 8. I have found that a single pump is not quite enough to power all 8 cultures so I will be running a second pump when I start the others. I also got a timer from Walmart installed, so no more unplugging every day.
For those of you that are growing phytoplankton here is an interesting quote from the Plankton Culture Manuel (6th edition) about not using airstones. "Circulation patterns in a culture vessel may play an important role in microalgae production. Fogg & Than-Tan (1960) found better growth of the blue-green algae Anabaena cylindrica shaken at 90 rather than 65 oscillations per minute, but growth stopped at 140 osicllations per minute. Subtle changes in circulation can therefore have large effects on yield. Our research indicates better growth is often achieved when the air stone is REMOVED, allowing large bubbles to pass through the water column. Small bubbles create foam or fine spray which trap algae cells and deposit them on the sides of culture vessels, causing desiccation and death.
Split when they get DARK, which could mean 5 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, etc. As for dosing, it depends on your culture "strength", I was dosing 1/2 cup per 50 gals at my max dosage. BUT WAIT!!! you have to ramp that up from very small doses (remember the nitrogen cycle!).
