Aloha Romi,
I grew periphyton mats outdoors in oligotrophic surface seawater on
ceramic tiles here, and I remember two most important adjustments...I
had to shade them from the sun, as the Hawaiian sun was too bright,
but you shouldn't have to worry about that indoors, but more important
to you, however, would be that we had to add agitation to the water to
get good growth. Adding pumps within our growing trays to increase
the flow rates across the tiles was our key...doing this evenly across
all the tiles was the challenge!
Good luck,
m
Michael J Navatta
Owner/Operator
SKOSE
PO Box 4154
Kailua Kona,HI 96740
808-430-9330
On Feb 25, 2010, at 12:32 PM, Romi Burks <[email protected]>
wrote:
Apologies for cross posting but I am not sure I saw this come
through and
any
help would be welcome.
Thanks!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Romi Burks <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 1:12 AM
Subject: Any hints for growing periphyton inside in flow-through tank?
To: [email protected]
Cc: Megan Rice <[email protected]>
Hello,
I would love any advice regarding how one might get some really nice
periphyton mats
to grow inside the laboratory in a flow-through, laminar-flow,
heated tank.
It does
not sound like it should be too hard...but alas, nothing works as
expected
when one
needs it to do so.
One catch is that we would like to do so without adding too many
nutrients
so
that we can later establish more mats with a low and high N level.
The
overall
objective of a future experiment involves feeding this periphtyon to
hatchling apple (~1 mm)
snails (*Pomacea insularum*) in a preference test against a vascular
emergent
macrophyte (wild taro). Up until now, we have been using basic
nutrient
diffusing
substrates (i.e. upside-down flower pots) to keep the algae going in
our
tank.
However, we have recently experienced some difficulty getting this
green
algae to colonize the
surfaces we want ---other nutrient diffusing substrate for example ---
versus having
reasonably successful growth on the walls of the tank. We originally
inoculated our tank
with tiles that we colonized in a local stream. The algae did
reasonably
well
on our first set of substrates but not consistent enough to create a
real
"mat" or "biofilm."
I am reasonably sure that the predominant algae is *Klebsormidium
*(formerly *Hormidium*). Nice, filamentous green algae that doesn't
seem
to come to an end. Broad, C-shaped chloroplasts that resemble green
planaria inside the cell but do not circle cell or occupy more than
1/2.
The tank is on a slow flow-through regiment with lights and we keep
the
temperature between 70 and 75 degrees...similar to the partially
ground-water
stream from which we originally retrieved our tiles.
Any suggestions are welcome.
Do plastic strips work better? If so, can you alter nutrient levels
using
them?
If you wish to ask any specific questions, feel free to contact me
off-post
([email protected]). Appreciate your time and expertise.
Thanks!!
Romi Burks
--
Romi L. Burks, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Biology
Co-chair, Animal Behavior Program
BEN Scholar 2008-2010 (http://www.biosciednet.org/portal/index.php)
Mailing Address:
Southwestern University
1001 East University Avenue
Georgetown, TX 78626
Contact info:
Office Phone: 512-863-1280
Lab Phone: 512-863-1640
FAX: 512-863-1696
email: [email protected]
Website: http://people.southwestern.edu/~burksr/<http://people.southwestern.edu/%7Eburksr/
>
--
Romi L. Burks, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Biology
Co-chair, Animal Behavior Program
BEN Scholar 2008-2010 (http://www.biosciednet.org/portal/index.php)
Mailing Address:
Southwestern University
1001 East University Avenue
Georgetown, TX 78626
Contact info:
Office Phone: 512-863-1280
Lab Phone: 512-863-1640
FAX: 512-863-1696
email: [email protected]
Website: http://people.southwestern.edu/~burksr/
