Phytoplankton troubles

[shaddshadd]

I have been brewing my phyto for 3 years now with NEVER a single problem. Recently, my cultures ALL crashed, they went gray and clumped to the bottom and then the water went clear all in 48 hours. I had a couple of bottles from a previous batch so I cleaned everything to restart and same thing happened. I then cleaned everything with bleach solution, new air lines, I used one batch of my own salts mix and one batch of pre-made saltwater from the LFS. I disassembled the air pumps to look for bacteria or mold, I changed to new light bulbs ( they are only 4100k but they are the same exact brand I have been using for years. I bought a new starter culture disk from FL AquaFarms. I use MicroAlgae Grow from FAF as well, it is fairly new and kept sealed in my mini fridge in my culture room.

Now, my cultures are going green but there is all kinds of film clumping on the side of the culture jugs and there is a ton of settling going on that never happened in the past. It has been 2 weeks they have slowly gotten greener but they are a mess and I wouldn't use this stuff in my tank!!

Can anyone give me any troubleshooting ideas??? Like I said, I have never had any issues ever so I am completely lost!!!

Thanks... Shadd

[CarmieJo]

Hi Shadd I can't help with the phyto but I want to say to TR.

[THEJRC]

few questions

1. how old is the medium you are using and what is the concentration?
2. Temp fluctuations... has it happened?
3. This one may sound stupid but.... air / heat ducting... is it near the culture station? are you using filters on your airlines? I've actually personally experienced a problem with my cultures caused by bacteria in the heating system spread during the winter months when the built in humidification system would turn on.

The cultures clumping to the bottom is the interesting one, I'd need to know what species (assuming nannochloropsis for this response) to give an educated answer but it sounds like the cells are dying fairly rapidly without deterioration in order to clump. This is most likely bacterial, or connected with shock from temp or possible salinity changes.


It may also be connected to the cleaning with bleach, are you drying your containers and rinsing well with COLD water prior?? I prefer a cleaner rinsing solution such as alconox soap for my cleansing as I've found that bleach if not properly rinsed can leave residues in odd places such as the top neck of the bottle that doesnt rear itself until later as the spray from a bubbling culture washes against it and into a culture.

Regardles, if its clumping you've got a fast death going on, I'd look at the cleaning solution and temp for the answers, most other problems will happen over time with little or no cell "clumping" due to deterioration.