November 6 2019

Culturing Phytoplankton for Mid Scale Production

What is Phytoplankton?

Phytoplankton, also known as microalgae, is a natural, nutrition-packed food that provides nutrition for a wide range of marine life. They absorb nutrients from the water around them with carbon dioxide to create essential nutrients critical to the health and development of most marine organisms (and people too). Pretty amazing, right! Keep reading to learn more about culturing phytoplankton.

Why grow Phytoplankton?

In nature, phytoplankton are at the base of the aquatic food web. When used as an additive, they help improve the nutrition of all the animals above it. Phytoplankton provides food for zooplankton, which include rotifers, copepods and artemia. These tiny organisms are then inturn eaten by sea horses, corals, and anemones.

Did you know that phytoplankton is a highly sustainable food source with a variety of incredible uses. For example, today people are using phytoplankton for nutritional supplements, biofuels, the production of pharmaceuticals, and as feed in reef tanks and aquaculture hatcheries. These single-celled, microscopic plants have immense value because they are rich in essential amino acids, trace minerals, chlorophyll, antioxidants, DHA, EPA, nucleic acids, and vitamins.

Culturing Phytoplankton

If you are in the early stages and looking to start with the basics and connect with algae experts, check out the Algae Foundation.

“The Algae Foundation’s mission is to promote the power of algae to transform human society and the environment upon which it depends.”

They offer online courses, Algal-based, K-12 curriculum kits to support STEM education, as well as many other resources. Additionally, for those of us who are no longer K-12, they’re offering a new course just for us, more senior students! Accordingly, this new course is called: Algae Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) – A great name, right! This course is completely online and produced by the University of San Diego and the Algae Technology Education Consortium. The world class experts teaching this curriculum are Dr. Steve Mayfield of UCSD, and Ira Levine of University of Southern Maine. Without a doubt, there’s no better time to start learning about the wonderful world of algae!

Bioreactors Made for Algae Culture

Advanced algal systems, like Industrial Plankton’s photo-bioreactor technology, can streamline your algae production by eliminating the repetitive, costly, and time-consuming aspects of algae culturing. Industrial Plankton’s photobioreactors make growing your own phytoplankton easy. Research algae bioreactor systems, like our PBR 100L provides:

  • More efficient space usage
  • Higher algal densities
  • Continuous or semi-continuous productions
  • Longer production cycles
  • Less contamination
  • Lower labor requirements

Would you like to grow your own microalgae? If so, please take a moment to browse through our photobioreactors for sale. You’ll see how amazing growing your own algae can be!