Curious to know if anyone is doing this. I have started a little project involving doing this and have some questions if you do.

Give this a read.
Seahorse.org - Phytoplankton: What It Is, Its Applications for Seahorse Rearing, and How To Culture It In 6 Easy Steps
I've tried it in the past.

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Good little article. Had some info that I could use but didn't go much into when to split the cutlures and such. I've read it should be about 6-9 days so I'm getting close for my first split.

Glad it helped. After that you might as well keep going up the food chain and look at zooplankton too.

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I cultured phyto and rotifers for years untill I took down my 55g to move into a new house.

I learned very early to use florida aqua farms micro algae grow for ferts.

I had 3 2 liter soda bottles for phyto and three for rotifers. Each with seperate air pumps, tubes, and rigid rods. I just used a 4' utility fixture behind all 6 bottles for light and used 24hr lighting.


After everything got going what I would do was take a mason jar, fill it to the 400ml of phyto. then take another mason jar and fil it with rotifers to the 200ml line. then fill that jar to the 400ml line with phyto (from th eother jar) and pour the other phyto in the rotifer culture. Then each day use different bottles using the darkest phyto and densest (or less green anyway) rotifers.

I would pour the 400ml phyt/rotifer mix into the tank then collect 400ml from another part of the system (like sump). And add a little water, Nuke that in the microwave to boil it for a minute or two to kill anything from the tank.

I let that cool down then added some micro algae grow and poured it in the phyto culture I had used before.


Occasionally I would get one culture crashing. I would pour that into the tank, use a new bottle, fill it half way with dark green phyto from the other bottles add nuked tank water with micro algae grow. Occasionally just adding the micro algae grow would green up the culture in a day or so.

About once a month I would have to clean all the bottles and adjust salinity and pour the cultures into 6 clean 2 liter bottles.

I also used a permanent coffee filter ("wire" mesh type not paper) to filter out the phyto cultures. That seperated "mats' from the suspended phyto.

Yes it took time but actually was easy to do. Much better for your tank then dead bottle stuff from the LSF.

my .02

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fw leiden since 1979, fo salt since 1979, mixed reef 55g 2002-2009. Strong emphasis on the tank taking care of itself. Balanced with plant life, no water changes, tap water, no filters in FW. Only dosing calcium, alk, mag in marine reef tanks. http://www.aquariumforum.com/f15/my-...ods-26410.html
recent tanks (till 2009) 7 years- 10g FW leiden 7 yrs, 55g mixed reef 7, 2 yrs, 20g FW leiden, 10 g fw leiden , 29g mixed reef, current tank 55g leiden

I did get the Micro Algae Grow. I got my initial cultures from Carolina. Have two more waiting to get started. I'm trying to decide at what salinity I want to grow those two at. The Nannochloropsis has grown really well at 19PPM. The Dunaliella in full salinity hasn't done anything as yet. I'm suspecting a weak culture as it is very light. I'm going to order new cultures this weekend.

I think you are on the right track. Some use 5g buckets with a strip light down the center and the cultures around the edges.

I also kept the sg lower then the tank. like 1.020 or so.

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fw leiden since 1979, fo salt since 1979, mixed reef 55g 2002-2009. Strong emphasis on the tank taking care of itself. Balanced with plant life, no water changes, tap water, no filters in FW. Only dosing calcium, alk, mag in marine reef tanks. http://www.aquariumforum.com/f15/my-...ods-26410.html
recent tanks (till 2009) 7 years- 10g FW leiden 7 yrs, 55g mixed reef 7, 2 yrs, 20g FW leiden, 10 g fw leiden , 29g mixed reef, current tank 55g leiden