How to Harvest Your Culture
- Clean and sanitize separate, new containers
- Remove the culture container lid, rigid airline tube and flexible airline tubing and place into the sink to clean for the culture that you are splitting. While at the sink, clean a funnel or any utensils to be used with Ethyl Alcohol and RODI water. Be sure to rinse equipment until the Ethyl Alcohol smell is gone. Place in a separate clean area for the time being
- Safely and carefully pour the culture into the new culture holding container(s)
- Mark the container(s) today’s date and place into the fridge with the top resting on the vessel. Do not tightly close the vessel, leave it loose for gas exchange while stored. Once you harvest your cultures, we recommend that you store them in the refrigerator for 24 hours in order to kill off any unwanted, harmful bacteria that may have grown in the culture. From there, bring it back to room temperature and feed it to your tank.
- Take the original culture container and fill the bottom with RODI water. Using a bottle brush, clean the inside of the entire container. Rinse out the container with RODI water, empty it and allow it to dry
In the next section of this course you will find a video that shows the process of harvesting a Phyotplankton culture using the storage jars that we recommend at the end of this course.