Set up Plankton Culturing business?

[Jun Hong]

Most of us buy DT plankton that is not cheap and our money is earned by American!

So I wonder why nobody consider set up this business to support local demand? He/She could be one of the forum sponsor to take order from our members.

Or maybe plankton culturing is so tedious and the profit margin to too low to set up this business?

[RockyBoy]

Probably we dun have the equipment to extract the small phytos.

[Jun Hong]

Those reefers who has started culturing should know how to do. May be they can consider start the business?

[ah^siao]

DT is of mixed cultures.. whereas those reefers that cultivate here is mostly of pure cultures?

[coralreef]

i do culture phyto but it's of a single breed....not easy to make like DT as they use 4 diff breeds.

[Achilles Tang]

The product is American but the distributor is Singaporean.

Phytoplankton culturing on the home hobby scale is not worth it for commercial sale. You need dedicated facilities to culture enough phyto (density) and in ample volume before you even see some returns.

It does take time to culture and harvest and the risk of cultures crashing and cross-contamination is always there.

You have to gather enough experience to know how much matured each culture is before using it or you'll be adding too much fertilizer nutrients into your tank.

Buying it off a hobbyist - you gotta trust his methods... or grow hair algae!

[Matt06]

For those lazy people, you can always ask from those who actually culture them...

[Cookiemunster]

In my opinion its not worth while to do this to make money. And its certainly not ethical to sell a bottle of home made phyto at anything more than $10 per 1.5L bottle.

The concentration of DT is so much higher than what home made can ever do. If you do the maths, you can actually end up paying more for the home made phyto if you pay more than the super concentrated DT. As someone posted in the sale section. (the maths I mean)

But of course home made is fresher and confirmed ALIVE.

I wouldn't trust any sponsor to actually give you the REAL cultured amount which has been sitting for 10days. Any less and you risk residual phosphates and nitrates which is used as fertilizer.

Imagine if the one selling was trying to make more money? He would just dilute with half fresh salt mix and he can double his amount.

So the best solution is still DTs or grow your own or get from people you really trust.

[ah^siao]

wad is the concentration for DT?

[yazid]

Haven't you see Underwater World culturing stations. Huge!