how to culture your own phytoplankton ??

[grumpy_banghai]

Can someone make a sticky on how to make a cheap phyto culture please?

[Viking]

I did a farm a year or so back for feeding rotifers to feed fry. It was a bit of a failure as the fry I fed the rotifers which had been raised on my homemade phyto all died. Something wasn't right, and couldn't work out what it was.

Dead easy to set up though, but unfortunately all the pics I took were on my geocities account which has now closed down.

I still have a photo of what it looked like when it was running to give you an idea.

http://www.viking-heating.co.uk/pics/phyto.jpg

Basically, light unit on a timer shining through the bottles. Air pump with a gang of taps to feed all the bottles. Bottle top with two holes drilled on it, one hole with a length of rigid airline hot glued in it so that the air line just about touched the bottom of the bottle, and the second hole as an air relief to allow the air to escape. You need one of these for each bottle you're going to run, obviously. Then an air pump to bubble the mixture, some fertiliser, a starter culture of phyto, and salt water to add to.