how to sterilise salt water?

[rayjay]

Why not just buy the phyto paste then?
You eliminate cost of lighting, containers, and your time.
It takes very little to do a lot.

[johnrt]

[sunny d polyp]

quote="rayjay"]Why not just buy the phyto paste then?
You eliminate cost of lighting, containers, and your time.
It takes very little to do a lot.[/quote]

Hello rayjay,
I consider it part of the hobby I enjoy it. Everything I do is laying the ground work for my dream which is breeding fish and inverts, at some point I will have to work smarter and not harder but if push comes to shove I will know how to raise rots and culture phyto.

[sunny d polyp]

Hello Johnrt, I did scale down to the "pup" but I am adding a refugium type sump, a 5/gal "deep sand bed" bucket, Fluval filled with Bio-chem carbon and a sand filter (fluidized bed), it's no built yet but you will be the 1st person I send the pic too since I owe you for the idea/design in the first place, thx.

[johnrt]

[sunny d polyp]

[natureAddict]

[sunny d polyp]

I'm not one of the guru's here but , what sg do you culture your phyto at and when you split what percentage culture water to phyto culture (50% to 50%) and how often?
I split 40% phyto to 60% culture water and inoculate with .8ml's of sodium hypo to 1/gal culture water with a sg of 1.021, I add the chlorine at least 24hrs before I split and dechlor with 1.0ml thio and I use .5ml's Algro per 1/gal, I then culture for 7 days exactly (end of exponential phase). I sieve everything including phyto and culture water through a 53 micron screen (just in case those little roti's show up), I used to use 1/gal Rubbermaid containers and washed them thoroughly with Alconox soap and keep them sterilize until I use them again but now I built a reactor and hang 17L plastic bags (much simpler).
Every three months I start a new batch of tet and nano because eventually my nano cultures do start to loose that beautiful emerald green, the tet seems to naturally be not as pristine green even from the beginning (not as dense and a bigger animal). I've only been doing this about a year and a half so I still learn something new and a better way to do it.

[natureAddict]

thanks Sunny.
my sg is .021 n usually i use about 20 to 30% of the old culture thru a coffee sock n that would filter off some detritus. somehow i havent thought of filtering my water thru a 53micron, cus that could take away alot of organice matter.
but if the tank water is boiled, it wouldnt matter if there is anything in there, right? just wondering.

[sunny d polyp]

nature, in my phyto culture water all I really want are the components of NSW with out any organics (bacteria or any other organism that was alive) I have found that even though you boil the water your still starting out with elements that could help facilitate bacteria production. I bought a 10 micron sieve from FAF and now I'm sieving my culture water and my nano and iso cultures that I'm splitting but since the tet is larger I ordered a 25 micron sieve (FAF) to strain the tet as well. There are more and more people on this forum buying spiralina powder it is so much easier but like I said in an earlier post I love doing it and have never seen it as work or too much to handle. Also, I do not sieve the phyto that I,m not using for the split it gets bottled and stuck in the fridge and I'm very careful not to stir or shake the vessel where I get the phyto for the split (the 10 micron sieve clogs easily) so it stays as clean as possible, some here shake their cultures daily and it seems to work well for them but I depend on the aeration to do that. Good luck with culturing if you decide to go that route and have the time.

[natureAddict]

some updates - i now used newly mix sw for my nan n its growing well. Partly cus my Algae Turf Scrubber is working n i dont change water now except when i need to siphon my sandbed n that water cant be recycled.

Interesting news is that a bottle of nan i kept in the freezer for 1yr4months resurrected n is green. i wanted to experiment to see how long it will keep in the freezer,
n also to have a back up in case of crashes.

cheers

[car2130]

Hello everyone. congratulations on the establishment of this forum. After a year reading it and learning from you already today I can share some of my experiences.

I used all the techniques discussed by you and the best for me has been the heat. But all farms I know use chlorine.

Sorry for my English but use a translator,

[Zante]

Ok, extreme noob alert here, so please be patient.

I have a 5 litre phyto reactor and I'm having problems with pollution of the phyto by algae.

This wasn't much of a problem this summer when I bought it, but it has become increasingly so. I have sterilized the reactor three times with a solution of half bleach and half water. It would work, but each time the culture would become polluted more quickly. This last time I only managed to split the culture once before the reactor got invaded with algae.

I have found this thread about sterilizing the water with chlorine every time, and it makes sense, but I'm not too sure how to do this, so please bear with me ans please tell me if I've understood the materials and the procedure.

So... I sterilize the water with this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sodium-Hypoch ... 20c1dd1cd0
adding 1ml per litre

I prepare a solution of 75grams of this
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1KG-IN-20X50G ... 417c8fc4c3
in half a litre of water and use 1ml per litre of the solution to dechlorinate

I add the appropriate amount of f/2 and add to the reactor?

[Amie]

Can you post a picture of your setup?

There are a couple of ways that a phyto culture can get contaminated, even if the container is sterilized:
1) the culture is already contaminated
2) the water you use, (RO), is not sterilized
3) you are not filtering the air going into the system (i.e. dust particles, contaminants from other cultures in the air, etc.)

[Zante]

The setup is a clear acrylic cylinder, with a smaller cylinder inside it for the light.
There is a lid with a hole of approximately 2cm diameter to let the air out (should I plug it with some sponge?)
There are two inlets for the air as the cylinder is quite wide.

I don't use RO water, but the same salt water I use for water changes, which is stored in a 200 litre water barrel with a lid.

... And no, I'm not filtering the air, which is possibly something I should be looking into.

How is it possible though that contamination happens more quickly every time I sterilise the reactor?

[Amie]

[Zante]

Every time I sterilize the reactor I buy a new culture and start over.

Ok, I guess it's inevitable. I'll get an air filter and start sterilizing the water when I split the culture, and just accept that I'll have to start over every so often.

[Zante]

Would a water filter work for cleaning the air a bit?

Basically the air from the pump goes into a bottle where it bubbles through the water (maybe using an airstone) and only then goes through to the plankton culture.

[Jclaas]