Live phytoplankton and why you should add it to your reef tank! 

I just got my live Phyto to start dosing! Great video as always! Thanks for sharing your journey. Cheers from Kansas City!

Says “Our little eco system in our living room” while standing in front of a MOSTER tank 😂

am new in these reef tank things...love ur advice...clear and easy to understand...

Thanks for the video Sam, i will try it, see what it does for my tank

Been struggling with low PH. Def worth a shot, thanks for the tip👌

Another great informative video!

Great video, thanks. These are my thoughts on phyto also, it's a win win situation.

A hole in one, great video and product by CC

Very good point Parker; I totally agree. I breed my own phytoplankton every now and then and it's very easy. Most important is to work cleanly in the containers and keep them clean.

This vid was amazing sam.

Nice informative video Sam . I've just started dosing phyto this week. I was told to store it in the fridge and dose after lights out . I'm surprised to see that you auto dose it with no ill effects. Something I would like to try after seeing you successfully do it. Thanks for sharing.

Just the info i needed 👍 thanks

Another really good video. Was talking to a guy who grows it and he doses 500mL-1L on his Reefer 250 a week!

Another great video I feed live brine shrimp sometimes and I always gut load them with phyto , gareth in the UK

It's great stuff. I have been using it for a few months now. I feed it directly into main tank. Even the fish love it. Skimmer can go crazy lol

good explanation! i really like your vdo..

Love the video! Phytoplankton is - in my humble opinion - one of the most interesting und underappreciated things in reefing. Even though I can get phyto for free from a friend of mine I'm tempted to start my own culture and experiment with higher dosages...

Thanks for this, I have been dosing it at lights out along with my other coral foods. Mainly because this is when my skimmer shuts down for a couple of hours. Will give the morning dosing a go 👍

Great video. Perhaps I was the only one waiting for you to show us a tutorial on how to make our own by the end of this video ... 😂

Great video Sam just recent starting dosing this and the colour on my torches is of the chart

Saturday and Sunday it's Parker's time baby.

Subbed! Very interesting and informative! I’ve just started a 10g nano with some softies and LPS frags of Goni plus a few small Zoa rocks. If I dose 1ml every other day do you reckon that would be enough and how long do you think I could keep a small pouch in the fridge without it going bad? Thanks for any advice!

Good video, I'm going to give you a rather long comment and I know you typically read / reply to them, hopefully it won't bore you! I have been breeding clownfish for the past 10 months so obviously produce my own (nannochloropsis). I produce several gallons a week and I have been adding to my reef tanks now that I do have extra available. Doing some experiments in my 10 gallon nano, I could turn the water green, to the point where I no longer needed to top off and worried about salinity changes and saw zero ill effects. Despite this being just a 10 gallon tank, it contains tons of micro fauna, sponge, ect. The entire glass was just covered in every kind of critter you could imagine. All the corals responded well. In my larger reef I simply pour extra in when I have. I would guess a few hundred ml in a 110 gallon system almost every day. I've never noticed the ph increase but I'll watch for it. I feel like we are just touching the surface on the benefits and longer term more controlled studies are needed. Your source of phytoplankton and species can very greatly! I typically will filter any crud out of mine with a 53 micron filter and occasionally look at it under a microscope to make sure it still looks clean. Cross contamination / crashes are very common in at home cultures that are not made in sterile environments. It's very common to give up on phyto because you don't see any immediate benefits, particularly if you are under dosing. This was part of the reason I overdosed my nano just to get a feel of what it would do over a few weeks vs a few months or longer. You really need to stick with it if you want to see any kind of improvement. That's true for many things in the reef, but I feel it's especially true here. Your tank size has ZERO barring or almost zero barring on how much you should dose. If you have a new reef with dead rock there simply won't be enough micro fauna to take advantage of it, and that's when you may have problems. While it is of course adding nutrients in most cases you are far more likely to get filtration benefits from excess phyto then other types of algae blooms. Again going back to the clownfish larvae in their tanks phyto is the sole means of filtration other than water changes. Finally if you are anyone else is still reading, different phytoplankton species are very different. They aren't all green, and very greatly in size. I only work with nannochloropsis but I am hoping to start culturing a few other species soon. By feeding various species that are various sizes different creatures or polyp sizes will take advantage of them.

Im a big pro phyto guy myself. The results while using it vs not are are obvious. I also agree it greatly helps the biodiversity of your reef not just helping corals.

Things are getting nerdier.. Some marine biology stuff Good information about the diverse requirements and marine life needs.

I dose 30mL per day in my 20 gallon cube and my tank does not experience algae blooms. However my tank is 5 years old and loaded with big sponges, feather dusters and other inverts that I hear consume it greatly.

Cool vid thx for info…

I got a scallop as a hitchhiker from some live rock. I started dosing phytoplankton to help feed it. It's been about 2 weeks. No negative side effects.

Great video again. For some reason at the middle of the video picture went black🤔, sound was going still😏, that was enough for me😉.

Great video. The only problem I have is my tanks upstairs and the fridge is downstairs so I keep forgetting to dose it. I wish I didn’t have to keep it in the fridge. Should you turn the protein skimmer off when you dose it?

Store in fridge or attached to dosing pump permanently? Never dosed it but one thing I was thinking of is a 0.5l Milk Fridge which acually has a hole for a tube built in. Problem then is tube length and amount of time "in tube".

Hello Sam, do you switch off your UV and or Skimmer for any period of time after adding the phytoplankton

Where do you get your sulfur media? I’m excited to give this a shot been struggling with my nitrates.

I've used in past and only kept in fridge. If I want to be lazy on a doser how long do you think it will last out of the fridge?

i dose 1l Phyto to my 1000l tank every day 0,5l in the morning and 0,5l in the evening, i grow it myself in an Grotech breeder 18l i never had any problems i buy one time and i had it for over one year, very simple to breed on low energy and you have the phosphate under your own control.

I’ve recently been adding copopods to my reef tank and in turn add phytoplankton within the past week and last couple days I’ve had a huge outbreak of what I think is Dyno or some sort of algae bloom, should I just stop or ease off with phytoplankton. Also would you know if there’s any issues with copopods and phytoplankton while running a uv steriliser. Thanks.

Another interesting fact on Phyto is the different types you can get Nannochlropsis, tetraselmis, dunaliella some have larger cell sizes others smaller some are motile and others are non motile… I agree tho only positives from dosing this stuff

Corals will love it

Parker nice to see all your additives in the fridge, just quick Q: how often do you dose the milk?🤣 🤣 🤣

I saw someone use the greenwater with fishfood and i wonder what it is ? I want to try it right now! But phytoplankton is how to transalte in chinese?

Now do these live phytoplankton multiply once in the aquarium? If so, wouldn’t this be a one and done kind of thing?

While running UV will kill phytoplankton, do you then run UV on the reserve cycle at night?

Can we use phytoplankton and have the UV on ?

It will also help in the battle with dinoflagellates along with pods. The more biodiversity in your tank the better!

Surly it will just get filtered out by the skimmer and roller filter?

Do u only have to dose it once and they reproduce from there?

I culture 4 different strains of Phyto and sell as a mix to reefers in my state. (or give away to my local reef club). I end up with so much that i give it away to my LFS and they sell it and i get discounts

In my experience, it doesn't remove nutrients, quite the opposite. I saw an explosion in sponges, which was a good thing.

What does that massive UV you have do to those little critters?

How do you auto dose without refrigerating it? Is it because you have such a small bottle and replace bottle before it goes bad ?

Is this can replace big 3 nutrients?

How does this affects the skimmer? Will the skimmer remove it?

you can make a never ending supply of phyto with only a bubbler and and a tiny amount of phyto fertilizer! Just add phyto, fresh saltwater, and fertilizer to a sterilized gallon container and wait 7 days. Bam you now have 1 gallon of phyto that you can dose to the tank and start your next batch with.

Now In 2022 do you still use phyto ?

Do you turn off your skimmer when you dose or just toss it and forget it? Thanks for the videos!

Dont overdose it tho. With anything go slow. I had accidentally double dosed and had a diatom bloom for a few days. I dose green and brown, thalassiosira wessflogii, isochrysis sp, nonnochloropsis. Corals seem to love it when it enter the water column

It is the oceans that supply most of the oxygen. The tree thing is a bit of a myth.

New reefer here in 2024, are you still adding phyto to your tank? If so, are you seeing an improvement? Do you still feel its worth it?

Marine snow

You talk about it increasing your PH, but has it done anything discernible to your PH level, or is that your belief?

Love live phyto - but it's tough to get so when I don't have it I dose dead phyto - along with 4 types of aminos, bacto balance (carbon), bacterial plankton (the most important), 2 types of nitrifying bacteria, waste / phosphate eating bacteria, 2 types of probiotics, reef energy AB+ and... probably dried coral food, spores etc probably doesn't count - yeah it's a lot but then I just run a skimmer 8 hours overnight that's it -biological diversity is what I love ;)

Just joined …johnny 5

Lazy reefers need the grotech phytobreeder and either their own controller or a couple of Versa’s to add tank water which gravity feeds phyto into your tank and food to the phyto in the breeder. - all automatically 😏

Wow 10$ per bottle ... It's sooo easy to produce it yourself man - look it up :)

Why can't you dump the whole bottle in so you can have a self sustaining population of phytos along with a bottle of zooplankton to balance each other out? I'd prefer to create a self sustaining phyto population in my tank than add it every day so my tank can have all parts of the food chain.

Tiny bits of plastic are legion in the phytoplankton. Those that eat phytoplankton like whales are the ones it hurts.

Your speak to fast!!!

You are great youtuber, but you should stay away from talking about marine biology. Clearly not your expertise. O2 production does nothing for ph.