sparky

This was all driven by Melevs thread on breeding phyto

The History
Pods
We started breeding in our bio 29 gal that we installed a sump and fuge on (about 50gal of water). Every month we added 1 to 2 bottles of pods that we bought from "somewhere". We found that as long as we added phyto, the fuge was always alive.

When we upgraded to the 120gal with 300gal of water, we broken off some of the pods and seeded the system for about 4 months allowing it to cycle. The pod population went over the roof. We took some of that and started a pod farm. We found again that as long as the pods had phyto they were fine. We also introduced rotifer eggs into the pod farm.

We ended up having a pod and roti crash every time we had a phyto crash and it was getting old and expensive. DT costs A LOT of money when you are trying to keep 20 gals of pods alive.

Phytoplankton
We started with about 4 types cultures of phytoplankton from Florida Aquaria. We stuck to the plankton food that Florida Aquaria offer after doing much reading on the web. Many conflicting stories about why and why not to go with a specific food substance.

We started with the good old 2lt bottles, that worked really well. We then increased container size to 5 gal water bottles and that was a miserable failure. We had crash after crash after crash. We then moved to a 20gal talk tank split into 2 x 10 gals. We lost those as well and I ended up ordering more phyto disks to get started again.

We moved between 2gal and 5 gals and just could not get back to the stability we had. Eventually we found that 2lt bottles are the only and safest way to go. Easy to manage, stack, stock, fill and empty. And when they crash, you only lose a little

(Will still post photos)

Our Lessons

• When phyto crashes, it crashes, you cannot stop it.
• Have multiple containers to farm phyto, so when one crashes you lose that container
• DO NOT try go with big containers
• Do not mix equipment between pod and phyto farms
• Do not use farm equipment on the main tank
• Pods do not like light and current and are very low maintenance
• Rotis do like light and current and are very low maintenance
• Room temperature will work
• Expect a consistent 20% to 40% phyto crash

Our Setup

1. Phyto
   1. We have a phyto "wall" for ease of switching containers and water
   2. We run cheap 2 ft Home Depot light fixtures with 6.5k bulbs
   3. We have 1 air compressor feeding all of the bottles (right now a single point of failure)
   4. We have ~25 lt bottles cycling every week
   5. SG: 1.019
2. Pods
   1. 10 x 5gal containers covered
   2. SG: 1.019

Operations

• We have a completely separate water supply and mixing system. This keeps the phyto water clean of any trash
• Run a 75gal/day RO
• We consume about 20gal of water on the farms a week
• We use seachem and are switching to Reef Crystals (we had a big crash directly correlated to seachem)
• Each pod buckets gets 2lt of phyto every 2 to 3 days
• Once a week we split the phyto 1/3 re-grow the rest bottled for consumption
• We have a system to suck out the bottom of the pod buckets every other week to populate out main system

Costs

• Every 2lt of phyto costs about $2.5 (including infrastructure, salt, etc)
• Every 2lt of pods (because of the density we trade and sell at) costs us about ~$15, mainly because of the consumption of phyto and the time it takes for the pods to mature out.

Why we do it

• We try trade a bottle of pods for a frag
• We use the phyto as an up sell
• We probably sell about 2lt pods & roti mix a week for about $30.
• There is no money in it, it is pretty much to share what we have learnt and keep out supply for our system going.
• It is just like fragging, we found out how to do it, and we seem to be doing it well, so we want to share in the knowledge

Summary

• Pods and rotis are VERY easy to keep and breed as long as you have a dedicated supply of phyto.
• Phyto . . .urrggg man it is temperamental. Next to anything sets it off, a bug in the water, salt, PH, temperature, not enough air, too much air
• We have tested the sale through the US postal service, and it works incredible well. we have managed to find a balance of pod volume vs postage cost that make it worth the purchasers cost of money and postage to do it.