Ok, here we go for another round about Phyto, this time its not a video, or me droning on (well, ok, a little of that), we have a guest expert. Joining me is Erik Stenn Owner of AlgaGen. Erik joins me to talk about all things Phyto. here is a run down of the items discussed:

Topics:
- Brief biological background
- Brief taxonomical overview
- common types of phytoplankton in the hobby
- Nutritional value of these types of Phytoplankton
- intro to various EFA, such as EPA, DHA, and ARA
- More info on culturing Phyto, items such as
- - Light, effects and cycle duration
- - Mixing, why we do it, maybe more than you think
- - nutrients, what's actually in those F medias
- phytoplankton culture contamination, identify and rectify


This show sponsored by:
CoralDynamics

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Great show rob, i really like the intros.. :)

Great show, I learned alot! I still have a question or two (as usual).


Can you utilize stored phyto you have grown a few weeks earlier to restart your cultures?
Along the same lines, can you store some of your innoc (that you buy from Algagen of course) and utilize it to restart your culture 6 or 8 months later?
I have been doing an exact split of my cultures. I have a 2 liter container full of phyto, I empty half and fill back up with SW. I thought I heard Erik say that we should use a 10 to 1 ratio meaning 1 part phyto and 10 parts water. Did I understand that correctly?
Thanks for the great show Rob and Erik!

1.) yes absolutely, the time if you keep it mixed up by shaking it up every few days you can do this, but you need to bed careful, you want want to shock it with too much light or too much of a temp change all at once

2.) Per Erik, the Inoculate cultures can be stored in the fridge with mixing for a few month, but its not the desired method, i asked the same question.. his recommendation was to use what you need, hang on to it for a bit, then if not needed see if you can give it to a friend to use o something

3.) your method is fine as far as i know, since its what i have been doing for a long time. i believe what Erik was referring to was calling from a smaller culturing container to a larger one, but i will let him redefine what he was referring to

hey, great show guys. you did great Erik, but where was my shout-out, homie? j/k. one quick thing i want to correct was that seagrass is actually a true plant (an angiosperm i think), not an algae. One of the defining characteristics of true plants over algae is the presence of a cell wall (made of cellulose i believe). some algae have "walls", such as the diatoms with silica shells, foraminifera and coccolithophores with CaCO3 shells, but these aren't cell walls. just wanted to clear these up.

Wow, i really love this phyto series. I know you reefers will cover your eyes and say some purifying prayers when you read this, but i am really not that attracted to corals. :crazy: . I really like fan worms, however, and phyto seems to be a great food for these animals. I really dig the depth you are going into the phyto topic here rob. The shows do a great job building on one another, and as someone who is new to all of this, i can say i have been able to follow these with relative ease.

great job!

Great show, Rob. I love the technical / scientific stuff! Keep it coming!

Rob,

Could you list out the latin names of the phyto you guys talked about in the show, it is one think to hear the names, it is another thing to know how to spell them :)

I know one is Isochrysis galbana and I actually found a very interesting article abstract about Isochrysis:

Potential use of ageing cultures of Isochrysis aff. galbana (Isochrysis Tahitian, T.iso) as starter cultures for live algal food production in tropical aquaculture (http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=3308416)

What were the names for the other ones?

Cheers,

Brian

well there is the species Isochrysis galbana as you noted.
this comes in two strains, T.Iso and i think C.Iso, the T means its from Tahiti, but i dont recall where the C.Iso was isolated at.

then there was Nanochloropsus, this is the most common type that is used to create green water.

at the risk of providing incorrect info, i will defer further info to Erik

Yeah, we talked about T. Isochrysis galbana (tahitian strain) and the C. Isochrysis galbana from Turks Caicos. Some researchers swear there is a difference between the two. C. Iso is supposed to handle warmer temps. We also mentioned Nannochloropsis (oculata, salina), Pavlova, Chaetoceros (diatom producing ARA).

Thanks Phil, I was thinking about the shout-out to Miami but couldn't get it across : )

I just wanted to share a cool experience that happened last week...We got a call from the Georgia aquarium for copepods to feed a whale shark. This is the high-light of my career so far. I mean we have fed clams, oyster, shrimp, corals, sea-urchins, some fish but nothing like this.

OK, I have to ask, how many copepods does it take to feed a whale shark?

Not sure exactly. We sent close to 1 million but in nature they swarm so thickly that when diving at night vision can be obscured..somewhat..or so I have been told....and that is dependant on location.

I setup my new culture on friday and i place thermometers on the outside. mine is reading 72 degrees. does anyone esle messure temp? if so what is your temp?

I think that temp should be fine for most species. Keeping a constant temp is a good thing.

Mine runs about that Wes. My question is can the cultures thrive under 20000K MH lights? I moved my setup and I thought I would try it with just my MH glowing on it. I assume if it grows coral, it will grow phyto...

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i233/wildeone/P1010023-4.jpg

again great show!! i have one question. i just got my phyto disks. do you use freshwater or saltwater (SG 1.019?) to soak them in? i have nano, and isocrysis.

you want to use saltwater

good thing :D i figured since the iso was a marine algae it would need saltwater. so i used it. i will hopefully be starting the cultrures tomorrow. YEAH!!!!