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You have Pod Hunters and want a steady supply of food for them, or you have a lot of filter feeding corals and invertebrates and you want to naturally supply nutrition for them. No problem you can set up your own culturing system. But wait, can I even do it, will I have the time, will I save a lot of money, and will I get the same results as buying from a professional? Let’s explore these questions and maybe generate some more.
Can I even do it?
This is a question that you will have to ask yourself. When I started my first cultures I watched some You-Tube videos and I was ready to go, it’s no problem and so easy just like baking a cheesecake (yes I do and you can ask @Ocean_Queenie, I do it well). Alas culturing live organism might be just a little harder than making a delicious cheesecake with no cracks and just the right caramelization. Did it all take off right out of the shoot, well of course not? But I didn’t start out small, if all the “Companies” sell blends, why would I want to grow just one? I took the same approach with the pods. Some phyto strains are harder to culture than others and honestly it can be a bit frustrating if you have never done it before, so my first piece of advice is to maybe start a little slower than I did (which was three species of pods and five strains of phyto all at once). And yes I had to buy new starters for some of the phyto multiple times, but some strains I am producing are from the original starters. I attribute a lot of my success to the person who sold me my starters was very willing to share his knowledge and advice. At the time I never dreamed I would be selling as their competition as I just wanted to dose my 1000 gallons of tanks without breaking the bank. So this is something that we share with our customers who purchase to start up a culture of their own as well. While some may think that providing the knowledge and advice to run their own cultures would be bad for business, helping someone succeed always has rewards, and I am guessing that these same customers would be among the first to recommend the company that helped them out. I know I certainly recommended the person who helped me. So yes with patients, knowledge, time and good protocols you can successfully culture your own. One thing I try to do is provide all the tips when someone places their order for our culturing kits, but I am outlining all of this into an Email so the person has all the steps at their fingertips.
Will I have the time?
NOTE: STERILIZING HANDS BETWEEN EACH CULTURE IS IMPORTANT!
(I use rubbing alcohol, but pretty harsh on the skin, or wear disposable gloves and change between cultures to avoid cross contamination)
It certainly doesn’t look like it takes much time when you watch the You-Tube videos. Of course they are edited and a lot of the nitty gritty is left out, but with proper planning and preparation it can go fairly quickly. A lot of this depends on how serious a person is and what all protocols they wish to implement. I mix all my saltwater in brute trash cans so when I was doing small cultures I would mix to 1.023 Specific Gravity and pump off what I needed into a couple of 5 gallon water cooler bottles to sterilize in preparation for splitting (Harvest Day) so let’s say 30 minutes to mix and get into containers and add bleach. Wait over 24 hours or so and the neutralize the chlorine let’s say 10 minutes to gather supplies and complete this task at least 2 hour before restarting your cultures (test for chlorine and adjust as necessary). Then depending on size and numbers, we will work with 2 phyto cultures and 1 pod culture for our example. So we have three sterilized containers that will hold the full volume of the culture we are making (this example gallon jars for culture so gallon pitchers for harvest). Pour out the entire contents of each culture and set aside. Take the culturing vessels and rinse well with hot water, then wipe down with something to sterilize the vessels and all equipment that comes into contact with the culture (rigid tubing, jars, lids and etc.) then we will work with the cultures while we let the products we used evaporate or neutralize. We will now set aside enough of the phyto to start the next culture, 16 Oz should be sufficient to start a gallon, but 32 Oz may provide for maturity sooner. We can now mix the remainder into a container and set aside. We will now run the pods through a plankton sieve to prepare them for our tank and restarting our culture. Stir them to provide a more even distribution and pour 1/4-1/2 of the culture through the sieve, rinse (I use a squeeze bottle that shoots a small strong stream), and then “wash” the pods out of the sieve into fresh saltwater (I invert the sieve and use same bottle as rinse). You can then clean the harvested pods, or depending on the amount of debris in your collected pods, you can feed them direct to your tank at least one hour after lights out. Depending on how long all this has taken, your sterilized products may be ready to use so the pods may get rinsed right back into their culture vessel. There are different approaches, but in a gallon I would add the cleaned pods to 32 Oz of fresh sterilized saltwater, and 32 Oz of my freshly harvested mixed phyto plankton. When the pods consume the phyto and the water clears, I add another 32 Oz of phyto two more times and have produced a gallon of rich, dense pods at the end of this cycle, so for me it takes about 3/4 of a gallon of phyto per week per pod culture. Now add your 16-32 Oz of fresh phyto back into your cleaned and sterilized vessels with the appropriate amount of sterilized saltwater and fertilizer (I use Guillard’s F/2 others use garden/house plant products, but I am not taking those chances around my babies) and silicate if culturing a diatom. Place all three cultures and watch them another week. I would say with practice you can do this in less than 1 1/2 hours. To speed this up, have double the vessels and transfer to start new cultures then take care of the remainder of the harvest, clean and prep used vessels for next week. So if everything goes smooth, 1 1/2 – 2 hours per week.
Will I save a lot of money?
Initially no, but if you stick with it you can save a considerable amount of money depending on tank volume and frequency of purchasing pods. You can purchase a system with 2 1 gallon vessels from many of the online stores with pretty much all the equipment you need for one phyto and one pod culture for approximately $210 plus tax and shipping. Then salt, starter cultures, measuring cup, pitchers etc. (I don’t use anything I use for culturing for anything else. But you could steal pitchers etc. from the kitchen for this “As long as you return them CLEAN”, @Ocean_Queenie says. But then you risk contaminating your cultures. I set mine up DIY, and it did take a few trips to Amazon, Petsmart, and the Hardware store and spent less, but not start-up right out of the box, lol. We are launching our own culturing systems, I feel very good about them, and they are more affordable. So the answer here is that it depends on how much you spend on pods a year, and what your time is worth, but yes you can save money.
Will I get the same results as buying from a professional?
No you will never achieve the awesomeness we provide! HA HA! Ok joking aside, you can achieve very positive results for your tank, and maybe for your own sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. But they may not equal the results you can get from a “Pro”. Will your pods be good enough to keep your “Pod Hunters” at bay, and well fed? If you are doing it right, and don’t crash your cultures, yes your pods will feed these guys. Are they as nutritious, maybe not as the professional is generally culturing in a more diverse phyto blend where the pods will gain different nutritional profiles from many vs one or two strains. This same concept applies to the phytoplankton. We will assume you have corals, inverts and pods that will benefit from the dosing of phytoplankton. If so it will certainly benefit from any dosing, even a one or two strain culture, but would benefit even more from a 10 strain blend. Similar to taking a Vitamin C capsule vs a daily multi vitamin, your body will probably benefit from the Vitamin C, but your body should receive more benefits from the multi-vitamin.
Thank you for participating in our survey, please ask questions and let’s see how we can help people decide if it’s right for them.
Thanks
Kent & Sherry
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