# Intentionally growing Algae



## Barbara Turner (14 May 2018)

Hi All 
I've got a nano tank that currently got a colony of daphnia for feed my main tank. 
I started feeding them with yeast but this leaves a horrible white residue. 
With the tank full of daphnia water changes are almost impossible without halving the population.. 
I was looking at feeding them on Algae.  

I put some nettles in the blender and put them in a bottle on the windowsill it's a horrible black colour.  
Will this really go green? Have I added way too many nettles?
Does it need a bubbler?
Do I need to seed it with water out my tank?
Will adding anything from my EI starter kit help?


----------



## doylecolmdoyle (14 May 2018)

I would just dose the nano tank with full EI and give it lots of light, sunlight if possible and you will have plenty of algae in no time.


----------



## Edvet (14 May 2018)

Ferts and sun should work, might add some water from outside ( pond, brook, stream)
This looks like a bit to much leaves/leafs.


----------



## Edvet (14 May 2018)

You can also put a larger container, bucket or plastic tub outside, add some daphnia and some floaters, Darrel keeps them like that, he gets mosquito larvae too that way.


----------



## Konsa (14 May 2018)

Hi
Trow some straw in the tank and some snails.I keep few tubs with Daphnia some in sun some in full shade that way.U will get stable cultures with not very high production but they wont crash all the time.
Here is the source article 
https://www.caudata.org/forum/showthread.php?t=77665
Regards Konsa


----------



## zozo (15 May 2018)

Barbara Turner said:


> Does it need a bubbler?



A bubbler can be used to create a little water movement.. But no airstone, because than the daphnia get trapped in the small bubbles start to float and die.
Than put only the hose in without an airstone and don't make it bubble to hard. 

It's not easy to make a Daphnia population not crash at one time, it can happen at any time even outdoors if you don't attend to it. I had them outdoor in the sun in a wooden barrel over 150 litres of water with plants, leaflitter in it and everything. At one time the population explodes like mad and than if not fed enough i guess it crashes again. You need to find a proper food source to keep it going.. Not giving it attention you are always at risk of a crash. Not so long ago i saw a youtube video on it and the guy adviced and swore by feeding them oatmeals and flowers instead of yeast.

Personaly i never tried.. I'm still in the middle of booming and crashing.. Still to lazy to figur it out..


----------



## Barbara Turner (15 May 2018)

The whole tank started smelling of dog poo. so got washed out. 
At a cost of a £1 for another bag of daphnia, it's not the end of the world. Just means that the fish are living on flake for a while. 

I read somewhere that spirulina was meant to be a good food I'm just to tight to spend a £5 on some algae.


----------



## zozo (15 May 2018)

If you have an outdoor spot than place a small tank or a bucket in the sun.. Add a little milk is enough to jump start it, or some dried pig blood or chicken manure pellets.. It wont take long before the water gets green if it gets sun. Than feed your indoor Daphnia with this green water. Could work, just no idea how much and how often.
 Also could drop a bag of life Daphnia in the outdoor bucket, as long as the water is green they feed and reproduce like mad, at one point it clears, than all is eaten and wont take that long to crash after that. And in the sun it can get to hot for them too.. Too cold never is a problem, they reproduce less when it's cold, but to hot definitively kills them.


----------



## Barbara Turner (15 May 2018)

zozo said:


> Add a little milk is enough to jump start it, or some dried pig blood or chicken manure pellets.



Thanks, Zozo for the tip.  I've got an empty bucket so I'll set it up tonight,  I'm doing a big water change anyway so I'll use the water out the tank. 
At least I know it's chlorine free.  I don't have any dried pig blood or chicken manure pellets in the kitchen but I do have some milk. 

About a cup full of milk in a medium size bucket?

The nano tank with the daphnia are in has a heater fitted so I'll set it to 20 degrees if they start breeding faster than the fish can eat them I can always turn it off. 
If I split the daphnia between indoors and out at least if one crashes I use the other to restock.


----------



## zozo (15 May 2018)

A couple of table spoons of milk in a bucket might already be enough..  Don't over do it, or els you might get a sticky mess again.. It is just to get some organics in the water to jumstart the algae growth... So anything can be used, organics usualy work best, but some plant fertilizer also. There are so many different ways, just google brreding Daphnia you'll see.. A lot works, just not letting it crash is the trick not a lot of people master it.

As said, i'm yet still one of them.. Till now what ever i tried it always crashed at one point. Must be doing something wrong.. For example not lookingg for a couple of weeks and find about all gone..


----------



## Edvet (15 May 2018)

Add some water from a vase of flower ( which has been standing for some days) to add some infusoriae.


----------



## MirandaB (15 May 2018)

I start my new daphnia tubs and tanks off with some rabbit poo which works great 
I also grow algae on rocks outside for my hillstream loaches and the green water from that feeds my daphnia.
Large,shallow cat litter trays seem to work best and I just add old tank water with a small dash of liquid tomato food,leave for a few days outside and green water soon appears.


----------



## Barbara Turner (16 May 2018)

Thanks everyone for the tips, I'll keep trying. 

On the plus side it's alot cheaper than a co2 spike when the tank does crash. 

Strangely the tank is still crystal clear  been running 14 hours light, no filtration, no co2 and full ei with 10% water change once a week if it's lucky.  Just a bubbler with no stone. 

The tank is also growing Monte Carlo that floats arround the surface and some left over oxygenating weed surprisingly well.


----------



## ceg4048 (16 May 2018)

Barbara Turner said:


> Will adding anything from my EI starter kit help?





doylecolmdoyle said:


> I would just dose the nano tank with full EI and give it lots of light, sunlight if possible and you will have plenty of algae in no time.





Edvet said:


> Ferts and sun should work,



I often wonder whether I'm living in an alternate universe. After all we have been through, do people still believe that nutrients, and specifically EI based nutrients cause algae? Really? Is that why we add nutrients to our tanks, so that we can grow algae? Aren't EI nutrients used to combat poor plant health so that we can reduce or eliminate algal blooms? Have we still not learned that LACK of nutrients causes algae?
If we continue to hypnotize ourselves that "ferts cause algae" then we will continue to draw the wrong conclusions regarding our plants and the health of our tanks.



Barbara Turner said:


> Strangely the tank is still crystal clear been running 14 hours light, no filtration, no co2 and full ei with 10% water change once a week if it's lucky. Just a bubbler with no stone.


Thank you for confirming via this experiment that there is zero correlation between EI nutrients and algal blooms.

Cheers,


----------



## Edvet (16 May 2018)

If there are no plants and there is plenty food available for the omnipresent algea why wouldn't they consume the food and start growing?
In pure RO water they would grow less then in a nutrient rich environment, wouldn't they.


----------



## ceg4048 (16 May 2018)

Edvet said:


> If there are no plants and there is plenty food available for the omnipresent algea why wouldn't they consume the food and start growing?


Not automatically. Algae really do not care how much nutrients are in the water. They respond to light, temperature and other chemical signals in the water.



Edvet said:


> In pure RO water they would grow less then in a nutrient rich environment, wouldn't they.


Folks who use RO water in their tanks have just as many algae problems as any one else. Algae require nutrients in the parts per billion range PPB as opposed to PPM.

Having said that, we are talking about water in our tanks, and we are specifically talking about NO3/PO4/Traces. 
In some natural freshwater systems algae dominate, and in other natural systems they do not.
In natural freshwater systems where algae are the dominant species, often, these are poor nutrient systems. 
Adding NO3/PO4 to those systems typically results in a fall in the algae population and a rise in plant population.
The poster child for this type of nutrient pollution is The Everglades, where in the natural state of this system, algae comprises greater than 50% of the bio-mass. Under conditions of PO4 pollution the percentage falls to below 50%. 

In other systems, the opposite occurs. Each system is different, so cause and effect has much more to do with the nature and content of that system than just how much nutrients are added.

Now if we start talking about NH3/NH4 then that's another kettle of fish. While NO3/PO4 result in a change in the balance of species, NH3/NH4, or rather the rate at which it enters the system, normally triggers algal blooms outright, especially BGA.

Often, when a bloom occurs in a lake or other waterway, all of these ingredients are present, but somehow, only NO3/PO4 get the blame.

The key thing to remember is that algal spores do not simply respond to the levels of NO3/PO4 in the water and they do not need the water to be rich in nutrients in order to grow quickly. PLANTS need the water to be rich in nutrients in order to grow quickly because they require 1000X more nutrients than algae do.

Light is the single most important and straightforward factor in triggering algal blooms, regardless of the water. The other factors such as nutrient levels, Oxygen and CO2 content and so forth are complicated.

Cheers,


----------



## Barbara Turner (17 May 2018)

Personally I think Its the perfect example of how  light intensity affects algae growth. 

The nano  tank has a budget led light that I suspect is less than 5 watts and never going to be sufficient for rapid  plant or algae growth.  I'm guessing the daphnia can eat the algae faster than it can breed. 
There are definetly advantages of running a low energy system that I had never considered. 

Two options for fun, what do you think. What should I try

Stick 2 X 50watt cob led's above the nano tank and count the hours till it goes green. 
I can then  test various things that are meant to reduce algae

Twinstar ozone thingy
High doses of seachem 
Co2 levels
Blackout duration. 
RO water Vs tap water

The other option would be to plant the tank with plants that are happy at 20 degrees and low light. 
I suspect even liquid co2 would kill the daphnia. 
I wonder what other micro organisms will breed alongside.


----------



## rebel (17 May 2018)

Barbara Turner said:


> Personally I think Its the perfect example of how  light intensity affects algae growth.
> 
> The nano  tank has a budget led light that I suspect is less than 5 watts and never going to be sufficient for rapid  plant or algae growth.  I'm guessing the daphnia can eat the algae faster than it can breed.
> There are definetly advantages of running a low energy system that I had never considered.
> ...




It would be fascinating to see a high light and low light tank with same EI nutrients for your algal experiment. :cheers:!


----------



## rebel (17 May 2018)

Actually RO water would also be a good control (hint even RO will grow algae eventually depending on light.... )


----------



## Barbara Turner (17 May 2018)

I've just ordered a 50W Led 6500K Light.

It's only a 14-litre tank and the light is rated at 4000 Lumens it works out to roughly 266 lumens per litre so definitely excessive.



rebel said:


> Actually RO water would also be a good control (hint even RO will grow algae eventually depending on light.... )



I'm not sure how long I want to wait, I'm sure distilled water would go green if I wait long enough.


----------



## Edvet (17 May 2018)

Barbara Turner said:


> 266 watts


----------



## zozo (19 May 2018)

Litlle excerpt on the professional take on it.. 

Cultivation of microalgae

Microalgae biomass production is based on the simple scheme:
CO2 + H2O + nutrients + light energy → biomass + O2

Challanges:
Algae cultivation has its own challenges as well: 
Availability of the sources of nutrients (for large scale production). Often chemical or inorganic fertilizers are used to achieve appropriate growth
rate of microalgae. Distribution of CO2 even though CO2 may be available as flue gases from power or chemical plants on industrial scale, CO2 distribution is
problematic. Still, because of the benefits of algae cultivation, in many cases it is worth dealing with and overcoming these challenges!

The effect of light intensity
Microalgae use light as a source of energy for synthesizing the cell protoplasm, and their growth rate is maximum at the saturation intensity of light and decreases when its intensity increases or decreases

For many microalgae, increase in the light intensity causes photoinhibition because of disruption of the chloroplast lamellae growth and inactivation of the enzymes involved in the carbon dioxide fixation.

Optimum light intensity for microalgae varies depending on the strain. For example in literature can be found that for Desmodesmus sp. cultivation optimum light intensity was 98μmol/m2/s, but for Dunaliella viridis -700 μmol/m2/s.

Than there is also effect of temperature... 

http://bioreactors.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Photobioreactor_applicationENG.pdf

It's not growing algae at home, but it might shed more light on techniques used to over come challanges.. Even nutrient composition does vary depending on Algae strain you like to grow.
https://www.google.com/search?q=growing+algae+in+lab


----------



## Zeus. (19 May 2018)

Think the easiest way to get production going is to plant some plants sparsely in and inert substrate use little to no ferts and poor flow lots of light OFC should have harvest in no time  to maximise the algea just use CO2 poorly and the algea will love you for it  has worked well for me in past


----------



## sciencefiction (19 May 2018)

When I was researching green water algae I came across info that in laboratory conditions it is grown by adding CO2. Apparently it is CO2 hungry...



rebel said:


> It would be fascinating to see a high light and low light tank with same EI nutrients for your algal experiment. :cheers:!



I once put two bowls with salvinia on the window sill. I over-dosed one with nutrients and left the other as it is. The nutrient rich one grew big and healthy plants and also got covered with a tick layer of green algae. The nutrient poor one grew the salvinia, but the plants were rather smaller and paler and there was no algae development. Both sat next to each other. So yes, nutrients will grow more algae....After a while as the nutrients got depleted the tick green algae in the nutrient rich bowl fell off literally to the bottom...


----------



## sciencefiction (19 May 2018)

My hillstream tank is blasted with light and I've been growing all types of generally unwanted algae, from big fluffy diatoms to hair algae/staghorn, green algae and blue green algae, and also a bit of clado and green hair algae. I don't dose anything at all. There's just a couple of plants for decoration but the tank is not planted. Right now the algae on the stones is so thick that hair algae started growing out of it. So they're growing on top of one another.  My snails are massive and my hillstreams are fat  There's no green water though..

Oh, and yesterday I noticed one of my big snails has got green algae on its shell In my other tank the shrimp ride the snails and clean up their shells


----------



## Barbara Turner (21 May 2018)

My New 50W LED light arrived this morning I'll try and get it fitted ASAP. 
Anyone want to take a guess on how long it will take before it goes very green. 

The tub of water I stuck outside is still looking surprisingly clear just developed a oily layer.


----------



## sparkyweasel (21 May 2018)

Pour the oily layer off, as it could interfere with gas exchange. If it comes back, you will need to find where its coming from.


----------

