Breeding Clownfish - Phytoplankton

Wes888

Reef enthusiast
Is a live culture of phytoplankton needed for clownfish breeding? Not completely nessessary any more. With so many Rotigrow, Rotifeed, & Rotidiet products out there, you can pretty much grow rotifer solely on using those commercial product. But with limited budget, I rather grow phyto myself. The only thing that I will have to continue to buy is just the salt and some fertilizer.

There are 3 most common/popular phyto and they are Nanochloropsus, Tetraselmis and Isocrysis. They all have slightly different nutritional profile. If you only have room to grow just one culture, Nano would be the easiest and have enough nutrition for most cases.

I ordered my algae disks from Florida Aqua Farms (FAF). Soak them in 1.018 salt water for a day and pour them into a 2L soda bottle and fill it up with salt water. Put about 15-20 drops of fertilizer in there as well. Don't be cheap and use the fertilizer for normal plants. Get the MICRO ALGAE GROW from FAF. It uses the guillard F/2 formulation. Your larvae/fish will be eating it (indirectly) after all.

Phytoplankton.jpg


Drill the soda bottle cap and insert a rigid air tube in there. Connect it to an air pump and have it bubbling away. With Nano, you want the bubbling rate to be like boiling water. With Tetra and Iso, you want it to be a bit slower. If you don't have much space, just put the 2L bottles along with some light fixture in a bucket will do.

PlanktonBottles.jpg


If you have some room, do it the right way. :D

IMG_3064-Phyto.jpg
 
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Actually, I do. Ever since I posted some thread in our local area forum, people have been buying the fish babies, rotifer, and the phyto from me.

Lot of people probably didn't aware, the phyto is not just for feeding rotifer to raise fish babies, coral also eat them. You know those marine snow or some cloudy stuff that when you squeeze out from those bottled coral feed, there are phyto in them.
 
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Actually, I do. Ever since I posted some thread in our local area forum, people have been buying the fish babies, rotifer, and the phyto from me.

Lot of people probably didn't aware, the phyto is not just for feeding rotifer to raise fish babies, coral also eat them. You know those marine snow or some cloudy stuff that when you squeeze out from those bottled coral feed, there are phyto in them.

Lol so how much money u made so far :mrgreen:
 
I seem to have made lot of money, but then I spend even more. lol.

Just bought another skimmer, a few more tanks, a few more pumps, two sets of LEDS. lol. In this hobby, we'll never really make money.
 
as far as I know, there aren't really another alternative retailer.

I would just use the normal plant fertilizer if getting from FAF is too expensive.
 
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