Growing spirulina at home

[Acacia]

Anyone got a setup? Thinking of giving it a crack.

[Ypsilophora]

Hmmm... I have also considered this... so I don't have a setup, cause I haven't done it! 

By memory, I was scared off by the price of a culture... this was a few years ago though, so pricing may have changed.

If you end up having a go, keep us updated! Would love to see how it goes!

Edited March 29, 2020 by Ypsilophora

[Tripyamine]

Hmmmmm I have a nice starter if anyone wants it le PM me 

 

I really like bags to grow in for a small scale, it's very popular in the industry too. 

If you get a bad infection/contamination you can burn your bags and reroll otherwise you can just keep reusing them.

We use Polypropylene bag rolls and seal them ourselves to the size we need, and then sterilize with 70% ethanol and UV

 

It's a good rule of thumb to always do a 1:5 inoculation with any algae (1:10 if you can't help it) 

 

I'll grow up a 5mll culture from a stock or a plate, scale that up to 25ml, then to 100ml, then 500ml, then 2.5lt and then start a bag culture with 10L and gradually increase the volume to 20L.

Then its too a big 100-200L bag like the one pictured and then to ponds/pools all the way up to 400kL

^^^these are easy to make ill get some photos of our ghetto ones

 

arthrospira (spirulina) likes to grow under basic conditions up to like a pH of 10 so lots of media reflect this as its useful for keeping lots of the contam/bugs out.

Some good info on making the standard media here but you might struggle with some of the chems, also good culture info too. 

http://sagdb.uni-goettingen.de/culture_media/02 Spirulina Medium.pdf

 

Another good media to use that you can purchase heaps of for cheap as is Cell-Hi JW (should be around $40 for a kg that will make close to 1000L), you will have to google around to find a supplier as we make our own and haven't had to buy for a while. 

 

At the end of the day if you scale up slowly and use appropriate media it's pretty easy to do, Spira harvests very easy compared to some other alga, but chitosan always makes it better! 

Sparge with lots of air and give em plenty of light (outdoors is better than LED but cheap eBay grow LEDs will work fine just gets expensive >100L)

 

 

[Darklight]

17 hours ago, Tripyamine said:

Hmmmmm I have a nice starter if anyone wants it le PM me 

 

I really like bags to grow in for a small scale, it's very popular in the industry too. 

If you get a bad infection/contamination you can burn your bags and reroll otherwise you can just keep reusing them.

We use Polypropylene bag rolls and seal them ourselves to the size we need, and then sterilize with 70% ethanol and UV

 

It's a good rule of thumb to always do a 1:5 inoculation with any algae (1:10 if you can't help it) 

 

I'll grow up a 5mll culture from a stock or a plate, scale that up to 25ml, then to 100ml, then 500ml, then 2.5lt and then start a bag culture with 10L and gradually increase the volume to 20L.

Then its too a big 100-200L bag like the one pictured and then to ponds/pools all the way up to 400kL

 

 

arthrospira (spirulina) likes to grow under basic conditions up to like a pH of 10 so lots of media reflect this as its useful for keeping lots of the contam/bugs out.

Some good info on making the standard media here but you might struggle with some of the chems, also good culture info too. 

http://sagdb.uni-goettingen.de/culture_media/02 Spirulina Medium.pdf

 

Another good media to use that you can purchase heaps of for cheap as is Cell-Hi JW (should be around $40 for a kg that will make close to 1000L), you will have to google around to find a supplier as we make our own and haven't had to buy for a while. 

 

At the end of the day if you scale up slowly and use appropriate media it's pretty easy to do, Spira harvests very easy compared to some other alga, but chitosan always makes it better! 

Sparge with lots of air and give em plenty of light (outdoors is better than LED but cheap eBay grow LEDs will work fine just gets expensive >100L)

 

 

 

 

Wow. Just wow. Awesome, thank you so much! I knew nothing of these.

 

What's the yield like for a domestic setup? Either per kg or how many single portion meals or meal additions you'd get per bag?

 

This is now one of my one-day-I'll-get-to-it projects. Glad you got there first :D

[waterboy 2.0]

I think all my intensive algal culture course notes are electronic... Have to check back... But I can send em on to anyone interested after I get through my shit filing system. From outta Utas school of aquaculture when they were a powerhouse. 

 

It's focused from an aquaculture bent for fish food production , but all the principles the same. Hardest year long unit I ever did at unimostly micro but a little bit of macro algae. 

[Tripyamine]

@Darklight spirulina can get to 2-2.5g/L and other stuff like nannochloropsis will only get to 1g/L (more if thin-film reactors). Also thats bone dry.

I personally prefer nanno both taste-wise and nutritional content-wise, its an omega3 (EPA) production powerhouse, you can expect to see 25% lipid and of that ~50% EPA

Both have good amino acid profiles too but iirc nanno is more complete being a eukaryote and not a bacteria like spirulina 

 

5g a day of nanno gets you an RDI of lots of stuff, but it's more an adjunct than a meal replacement. one day we will get there but I couldn't only eat nori (tastes like) soylent green is soon

 

with nanno you can grow out (from 1/5) to a dense culture in 4-5days, and if you harvest 80% so you can regrow straight away then your collecting 15+g a 20L bag/5 days.

 

~200L standing bags are the way to go, if you only yielded 100g it would be enough for a week. 

[rottenjonny]

I've been keen on this for a ages. Thanks for the reminder @Acacia