Live phytoplankton culture

fancy_fish101

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I’m wondering if my phytoplankton culture looks good so far? And wondering if the black stuff is normal.
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GarrettT

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Cross contamination would be my guess. Have a microscope by any chance? What strain are you culturing?
 
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fancy_fish101

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Cross contamination would be my guess. Have a microscope by any chance? What strain are you culturing?
Not sure. This is the stuff I used and the light in using. Could it be my fertilizer? I’m using plant fertilizer.
 

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GarrettT

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It’s the combination of brown and green algae, which is why it looks like that. When culturing, you really need to stick to a single strain.
 

GarrettT

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So that’s why it looks like that. But is ok to have it like that?
Really hard to gauge when dealing with multiple strains, especially without a microscope. Theoretically one strain should dominate overtime, but how would you know when to optimally harvest the culture? Kind of hard to do that when you have strains with different colors. Even strains that are the same color are different in terms of shade. Way more trouble than it’s worth in my opinion.
 
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fancy_fish101

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Really hard to gauge when dealing with multiple strains, especially without a microscope. Theoretically one strain should dominate overtime, but how would you know when to optimally harvest the culture? Kind of hard to do that when you have strains with different colors. Even strains that are the same color are different in terms of shade.
So, I should restart the culture. And find 1 strain?
 
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