Can you culture phytoplankton?

[Fishguy2727]

In my clownfishes book it shows a setup to culture the foods to feed larval and baby clowns and it had a few 2 liter bottles setup to culture greenwater (I'm assuming marine greenwater algae/phytoplankton). Am I mistaken?

Can I just start growing the live DT's Phytoplankton I just bought?

Any special care requirements? (like dosing a nitrate supply)

[OscarFan]

A guy at one of my LFS's does IDK how but you can do it..

[unleashed]

yes you can culture phyto. With regards to clownfish breeding, the fry do not actually 'eat' the phyto. You need to have a rotifer culture aswell. The rotifers feed on the phyto which in turn enriches them. You then can feed the enriched rotifers to the baby clowns.

The three most nutritous phytoplankton are as follows:

Isocrysis
Nannochlorpsus
Tetraselmis

These can be all grown together. 1mL of phyto should contain 13100000 cells of all three of the above combined in the following ratio

70:56:5 (Isocrysis:Nannochlorpsus:Tetraselmis)

[Fishguy2727]

How would I setup a tank to get a culture going with the DT's Phytoplankton I have?

[unleashed]

is DT's phyto live?

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[Fishguy2727]

Thank you. That will be very helpful.

DT's is supposed to be live. That is the one difference between it and the other plankton foods. That is why it is refrigerated (bottle states it must stay between 32 and 39F).

[Dave66]

Fishguy,
In the first section of my six-part culture manual is how to home culture Phytoplankton, plus sources for start-up cultures. DT's is refrigerated to keep the algae dormant, that is, not seeking food nor procreating. Home culture of Phytoplankton is done at moderate room temperatures, meaning you'd have to warm the DT's with iffy results. It'd be far simpler, not to mention basically fool-proef to purchase seeded Petri dishes of the microalgaes to start your cultures with.

Dave