Algae for Dummies

From:
Rearing a Plankton Menagerie
by Shawn Carlson

Materials needed:
Clear plastic soda bottles in the two-liter size
Granular chlorine
Dechlorinating agent from a tropical-fish store
Pump for a 10-gallon aquarium
Multiport manifold
Stiff plastic tubing
Filter with 0.5-micron openings
Micro Algae Grow
Liquid Silicate Solution
Algae samples
Fluorescent lamp
Discarded five-gallon jug
Hot air gun
What youre going to do:
First
Sterilize everything. This is to insure there are no bacteria to contaminate your culture from the very

beginning. If you overlook this step, chances are your culture will crash.
Go to your local pool supply store and purchase granular chlorine.
Dissolve as much of the granular chlorine as possible into 30 milliliters (or about an ounce) of
warm water. Stir gently.
After it is dissolved, prepare a 10-to-1 dilution by mixing five milliliters (about one teaspoon)
of the concentrated chlorine solution into 45 milliliters (about 8 teaspoons) of distilled water.
Try not to transfer any undissolved crystals into the sterilizing solution you are preparing.
Next

Fill the two-liter soda bottles nearly to the top with either distilled water (for fresh water algae)
or saltwater (for ocean algae)
Add five drops of the sterilizing solution to each.
Wait two hours for the chlorine to disinfect the water.
Chlorine tends to evaporate quickly from solution, which means you'll have to make up a fresh
batch of sterilizing fluid every time you need some.
You can also add a few drops of bottled dechlorinating agent from a tropical-fish store will also
do the job in no time flat.
Don't introduce your algae until you've made sure, (use a kit for testing home pools) that no
chlorine is detectable in the solution. If you skip this step, youll kill the algae when you do put
them in.

OK, so far, so good

One pump for a 10-gallon home aquarium can easily aerate (mix with air) 10 soda bottle flasks.
Use the kind called multiport manifold (Basically this a aquarium pump device with one
input and many outputs) to distribute the air to the different bottles.
Youll also need some stiff plastic tubing (also available at the aquarium store) at this point. You
may need to use the hot-air gun to bend the tubing. Youll use it to inject the air into each algae
culture.
You should also pump it through a 0.5 micron filter Millipore
http://www.millipore.com/index.do ($79 for a 10-pack) , to keep the bacteria from invading
your clean and sterilized soda bottles.

Now start feeding each soda bottle with the appropriate nutrients.

Aquaculture Supply (http://www.aquaculture.ch/product/hatcherie/food.html) sells Micro Algae

Grow for $4.20 for cultivating most kinds of green algae
Liquid Silicate Solution ($3.50) for culturing diatoms. There are directions on each package.

OK, the big day has arrived

The algae samples arrive in the mail. Theyll usually be in small plastic dishes filled with gelatin.
In order to remove the living cells, youll need to put the gel beneath a thin layer of your
growing solution and allow it to soak for 12 hours.
Using a sterile cotton Q-Tip, the algae microorganisms should then easily rub off the gel under
the gentle pressure.
Inoculate each flask with about 10 milliliters (two teaspoons) of the resulting solution.
Always make sure at every step that all your instruments are sterile and germ-free by carefully
washing them with detergent and sterilizing solution and then rinsing them with distilled water.
In a perfect world, or if you had a laboratory, your algae culture should be incubated at 19 degrees
Celsius (about 66 degrees Fahrenheit), but truthfully, I think most people could get away with just
letting them sit at room temperature.
Avoid putting them in direct sunlight, (Too hot)
Instead you can trying putting the flasks in front of a bright fluorescent lamp for 18 hours a day.
A standard bulb of at least 2,500 lumens works fine, but some people recommend "grow-

lights," which produce more realistic blue photons used in photosynthesis.

Once you get everything going, you should keep aerating (bubbling) the water on a constant basis. Give
it a week or so, and your container should be dark green with algae.
Once it reaches this stage the algae is mature and can be harvested. Now, be careful here, a cellular
explosion can occur (exponential phase) and crash the entire culture, so don't wait too long.
Extract 10 milliliters of mature culture and start a new batch. If you do this, you'll never need to
purchase another starter gel.
Scaling up
An algal lab will grow larger quantities of algae in 20-liter (five-gallon) containers called carboys.
You can scale this whole system up. Some companies charge $100 for these transparent plastic bottles,
but find a discarded five-gallon jug from a watercooler. It works just as well.
You can build a special arrangement of tubing, (See the illustration) using a hot-air gun, to bend the
plastic tubing. Simply heat it up, bend it how you want it, and allow it to cool. The purpose of this is to
allow air into the carboys without risking contamination.
OK, at this point youre getting good at this, you have made a number of successful cultures and want
to scale up. Great. Heres what you do

Fill an empty water jug with distilled water or salt water.

Add five milliliters of fresh sterilizing solution.

As before, let things stand for two hours, then dechlorinate the water and test it.

Add the necessary nutrients and add the contents of one complete bottle of mature algae.
Connect the air pump and make sure the container gets plenty of fluorescent light.

You can also track the rate of growth by using a special dipstick sold by Aquaculture Supply ($7.75).
All you need to do is put the stick into the jug until the algal culture covers the black ring on the bottom
of the stick, then read the depth off the scale on the side.
For each species, you can then calculate the density of cells using a table supplied with the stick. After
about a week, you should see definite improvement.