Culturing Phyto on a Petri Dish

Bigpapii

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#24

Bigpapii

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#25
Petri dishes came in. I made the agar medium and filled them up. Gonna let it cool down over night and seed them tomorrow morning
Im starting off with just 5 cultures for now.



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Bigpapii

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#26
I was impatient so I decided to cool it in the fridge. Then seeded them with nannochloropsis from the flask.



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#27
Update on the flask

Some leaked through the agar and sits at the bottom of the bottle and started reproducing



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Fizzman

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#29
Agar is made from seaweed, so putting it into the tank will add some nutrients, the question is, how are you going to determine population density to know how big of a pie slice to give the tank. Also, will you be testing the amount of f/2 left(like how do you know when the culture has used up most of its food source) because adding straight f/2 to the tank is probably bad, algae bloom for sure.
 

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#30
Although it would be cheap to ship it as a starter culture, or even as a rehydrate before use product.
 

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#32
Agar is made from seaweed, so putting it into the tank will add some nutrients, the question is, how are you going to determine population density to know how big of a pie slice to give the tank. Also, will you be testing the amount of f/2 left(like how do you know when the culture has used up most of its food source) because adding straight f/2 to the tank is probably bad, algae bloom for sure.
The culture would actually be growing on the smooth top surface of the Petri dish so wiping up the algae without getting any agar would be easy. If any of the agar however does break it won't hurt. Agar's chemical formula is C14H24O9. That means it's a carbohydrate. Since it's made up of those chemicals it acts as carbon sources for anaerobic bacteria that utilize the organic carbon in the nitrification process to bind and produce gas, thus eliminating the nitrates. I'm not sure how dense it would get that's why I'm experimenting with it rn. Also with the f/2 it will add nutrients however due to the fact that there will be little to no agar it won't hurt.



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#33
I'm very curious about how you will feed this medium to the tank.

Please record.

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Hopefully if the culture gets dense enough, to feed you would pour fresh saltwater into the Petri dish to dilute the phytoplankton and allowing it to be poured into a bottle while leaving the agar gel behind


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#34
Oh OK that makes sense about the feeding since the agar won't readily dissolve unless the water is hot. I guess u are already experimenting, but I wonder if if there is a max density it can be because of non aeration, and then also the max thickness it can draw the nutrient from since it doesn't have roots or eat the agar to expose more nutrients.
 

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#36
Oh OK that makes sense about the feeding since the agar won't readily dissolve unless the water is hot. I guess u are already experimenting, but I wonder if if there is a max density it can be because of non aeration, and then also the max thickness it can draw the nutrient from since it doesn't have roots or eat the agar to expose more nutrients.
I was thinking the same but then I saw this on eBay. In the description it states that one disk is worth 16oz of phyto
http://m.ebay.com/itm/Nannochlorops...%3A62e846b81590a5e0d7d487ceffc6d748%7Ciid%3A1


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#37
From that ebay description it would last longer in the fridge too than a bottle right? It says 3-6months
 

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#38
Yeaa they use this method in labs to store strains of algae
You would have to close it air tight to keep the agar from drying and store it upside down to let the water stay on the surface instead of the bottom of the agar. I read it on a research paper. I'll try to find it again and show you


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#39
I wonder if it would be better to lay half the agar down without the f/2(just a source of water) and the top half with the f/2, this would also help so that it doesn't grow on the bottom of the agar. Cuz if there is a max density on the top layer if it's partially due to cells crushing each other then for sure the bottom growth is mostly useless since it would be so thin or full of dead cells.
 

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#40
And it would actually show if the cells get embedded into the agar too. If access to the nutrient is via the surface area only, this would save nutrient and save nutrient being intro to the tank. But I am sure the agar needs to be a certain thickness to provide proper moisture. How did u autoclave it BTW?
 
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