Culturing Phyto on a Petri Dish

Bigpapii

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#1
I started a thread relating to culturing phyto the "normal" way (using jars, lights, water, fertilizer, and an air pump) but i feel like culturing them in Petri dishes is more convenient and saves space. I'm just wondering if anyone has done so. I'm purchasing Petri dishes anytime this month so if anyone has any experience with them drop a post below :)

Currently I am following this to create the agar for the culture
 
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#2
Oh man. That is way more work than bottle culture.

Do you have access to a centrifuge, lab blender and temperature controlled water bath?

The cool thing about this procedure is that its mention of the zooxanthelle homogenization technique is essentially what some of these designer coral places are supposedly doing in order to have the wild colored favites and brain coral that they do. I'm not exactly sure how the process that they do works, but it is all one step in the process, and something that I have wanted to do since getting into this hobby.
 

Bigpapii

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Oh man. That is way more work than bottle culture.

Do you have access to a centrifuge, lab blender and temperature controlled water bath?

The cool thing about this procedure is that its mention of the zooxanthelle homogenization technique is essentially what some of these designer coral places are supposedly doing in order to have the wild colored favites and brain coral that they do. I'm not exactly sure how the process that they do works, but it is all one step in the process, and something that I have wanted to do since getting into this hobby.
I do have access to those thru my chem teacher but I actually don't need it. The essential things I would need would just be a light source, Petri dish, inoculating loop, flame source, autoclave, agar, and f/2 medium. According to my teacher the things I would need to do is create a f/2 agar medium, autoclave it, isolate the colony thru streaking to prevent contamination,seed it with nylon messes and place them in the agar cultures with a 12/12 light cycle and bam you got your cultures aha




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Bigpapii

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#6
Just purchased the agar and Petri dish
I got an inoculating loop from my teacher, torch from my dad, t5s from an old setup, and f/2 and culture from the previous culture
As soon as the agar and Petri dish comes in I'll get started and post and update :)



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#7
interesting. I think you must scale up in a liquid medium. there seems to be just too little volume on a 5-10ml plate. plates are usually used for selecting colonies; i think you want a large number of plankton species and lots of each.

BTW, I just did this exact thing for my kids science fair project. You can go cheap by making your own medium
https://www.madaboutscience.com.au/store/index.php?main_page=page&id=43
you can boil the agar instead of autoclaving.
you can make your own loop from a coat hanger and use a natural gas range flame to sterilize.

or you can buy ready made plates/swabs, etc.
 

Bigpapii

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interesting. I think you must scale up in a liquid medium. there seems to be just too little volume on a 5-10ml plate. plates are usually used for selecting colonies; i think you want a large number of plankton species and lots of each.

BTW, I just did this exact thing for my kids science fair project. You can go cheap by making your own medium
https://www.madaboutscience.com.au/store/index.php?main_page=page&id=43
you can boil the agar instead of autoclaving.
you can make your own loop from a coat hanger and use a natural gas range flame to sterilize.

or you can buy ready made plates/swabs, etc.
That's awesome how did the project turn out? Florida Farms actually sells in disk and claims to be work as much as a 500ml so I wanted to see if I could do it. If it gets as dense as theirs then that's way better than culturing it in water aha. Oh for the medium I'm mixing the agar, saltwater and f/2 medium I use with my current culture. I got the inoculation loop for free plus I have access to an autoclave so I might as well use it ahaha. Thanks for the link btw


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That's awesome how did the project turn out? Florida Farms actually sells in disk and claims to be work as much as a 500ml so I wanted to see if I could do it. If it gets as dense as theirs then that's way better than culturing it in water aha. Oh for the medium I'm mixing the agar, saltwater and f/2 medium I use with my current culture. I got the inoculation loop for free plus I have access to an autoclave so I might as well use it ahaha. Thanks for the link btw

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My son won his division in the LA county science fair and almost state. The plates were a small part of his project. I just wanted to introduce him to bacteria and culturing.

I did so much mulecular genetics in college then biotech, from original sequences, to insertion, expression, all the way to large scale growth, protein extraction and purifcation for biologic drugs. I can assure you industrial scale up was done in a dozen 10,000 gallon vats like a beer brewery. Good times.
 

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My son won his division in the LA county science fair and almost state. The plates were a small part of his project. I just wanted to introduce him to bacteria and culturing.

I did so much mulecular genetics in college then biotech, from original sequences, to insertion, expression, all the way to large scale growth, protein extraction and purifcation for biologic drugs. I can assure you industrial scale up was done in a dozen 10,000 gallon vats like a beer brewery. Good times.
That's so cool aha tell him congrats
I'm actually gonna be a biotech major at UCI or Cal Poly next year.


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#12
How do u dose it though? Put the whole agar in the water?
Yea you would put a little bit of new saltwater in the agar a day before use to loosen it up then the next day mix it with water and bam instant live phyto ahaha


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Bigpapii

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#14
But what's the affect of the agar in your system? Just excess nutrients?
It would be exactly the same as if I would culture it in water. I'm going to be using the ratio of f/2 medium as I would with water so it would be equivalent to dosing "regular" phyto. The agar itself does not have much effect since it would only be about 3mm thick plus the chemical formula is C14H24O9. It would be similar to sugar dosing which in facts lowers your nitrates.
 

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Jacob, I have gang valves on order from China, and other parts comming, I'm gonna be hitting u up for a starter culture of phyto, do u also have cultures of pods? Not a mix though
 

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I have a question when it comes to dosing though. I've read that dosing phyto is like adding phosphates to your tank. I mean I think that's true if u add so much but at the dilution of what we dose, the cells would actually stay alive if it wasn't eaten right? So unless something eats it and process it into poop it wouldn't hurt the tank right? So yeah it eventually contributes to tank parameters but a lot better than adding stuff like oyster feast and any other type of food that will contribute to parameters without actually getting consumed other than by bacteria. Is that a correct understanding or would the phyto die pretty fast in the tank even if not eaten?
 

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I have a question when it comes to dosing though. I've read that dosing phyto is like adding phosphates to your tank. I mean I think that's true if u add so much but at the dilution of what we dose, the cells would actually stay alive if it wasn't eaten right? So unless something eats it and process it into poop it wouldn't hurt the tank right? So yeah it eventually contributes to tank parameters but a lot better than adding stuff like oyster feast and any other type of food that will contribute to parameters without actually getting consumed other than by bacteria. Is that a correct understanding or would the phyto die pretty fast in the tank even if not eaten?
Nah sorry I don't have pods isolated in a culture
Just think of phyto as fish food if you add too much it will add phosphate. The reason is cuz phyto won't live as long as it can in a culture. It doesn't have enough nutrients to survive and multiply. The longest it will live would be about a month or so if it doesn't get eaten and when it dies it'll turn into phosphate. Just know how much your tank needs and you should be fine. I've ven dosing for a couple months now and my phosphates are low.


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#19
Experimenting with the agar f/2 medium
This medium contains
200ml of saltwater
1ml of f/2
1ml of fluval trace elements
5g of agar powder



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Since the Petri dishes haven't arrived I will be testing out the agar medium in medical collection tubes



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