So it has been about 9 days since I started project Algae-coloda and things are looking good. Basically what is going on in this shot is as follows. The jug is a 3.89 litre juice bottle, cleaned and rinsed. Then
sterilized with a
bleach and water solution. Rinsed with freshly made salt water. and then filled up 3/4 of the way. The specific gravity of the water was 1.0215. After that about 500ml of store bought refrigerated live
phytoplantkon was added as a starter culture. This made green water that looks a lot like watered down Mountain Dew. I purchased an
air pump, the kind you use to run features in fish tanks. This pump has 2 outputs on it. I intend to run 2
phytoplankton batches; and one line per batch. But for now I have 2 lines running one batch. The air bubbles through the green water to keep it agitated, it helps to eliminate a lot of settling that may take place. If phytoplankton settles on top of other plankton, the stuff below will die after a little while. So every morning I remove the air lines, cap the bottle, and give it a good shake. Just to make sure that anything that has still settled, gets re-introduced to the water column. Every few days I add 3-5ml of
Miracle Gro Liquafeed plant food. And I have had to top up the mixture oncewith more salt water. There is a 23watt CFL hooked up directly beside the bottle to provide the phytoplankon something to
photosynthesize. The light is on a timer, 16 hours on, 8 hours off. Just like 'nature' This is pretty much the whole setup. Not a lot of
maintenance required to keep it going. I have a few tweeks I would like to make. The jugs are going to get swapped out in favour of round glass vases. I will need to build special lids for these. My flexi-tubes are going to get a facelift. Hard straw down to the bottom of the mix. It is a little bit of a pain to fish the hoses down now. They want to float and push around. I would also like to incorporate some sort of self mixing device. Either a mixer blade/propeller run by motor. Or an air powered rotating bubbler that can do double duty. Lets see some results after 9 days. Notice how much darker, more green, the batch looks. Also notice how much more light it blocks now.
So it has been about 9 days since I started project Algae-coloda and things are looking good. Basically what is going on in this shot is as follows. The jug is a 3.89 litre juice bottle, cleaned and rinsed. Then sterilized with a bleach and water solution. Rinsed with freshly made salt water. and then filled up 3/4 of the way. The specific gravity of the water was 1.0215. After that about 500ml of store bought refrigerated live phytoplantkon was added as a starter culture. This made green water that looks a lot like watered down Mountain Dew. I purchased an air pump, the kind you use to run features in fish tanks. This pump has 2 outputs on it. I intend to run 2 phytoplankton batches; and one line per batch. But for now I have 2 lines running one batch. The air bubbles through the green water to keep it agitated, it helps to eliminate a lot of settling that may take place. If phytoplankton settles on top of other plankton, the stuff below will die after a little while. So every morning I remove the air lines, cap the bottle, and give it a good shake. Just to make sure that anything that has still settled, gets re-introduced to the water column. Every few days I add 3-5ml of Miracle Gro Liquafeed plant food. And I have had to top up the mixture oncewith more salt water. There is a 23watt CFL hooked up directly beside the bottle to provide the phytoplankon something to photosynthesize. The light is on a timer, 16 hours on, 8 hours off. Just like 'nature' This is pretty much the whole setup. Not a lot of 
This looks perfect! I almost feel embarrassed knowing how much I have spent on phytoplankton from the store. It seems like this is a fairly straight forward process.
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