GMU:DIY Bio: doing things with biology/Frederic Blais-Belanger/How to take care

Handling and lighting

This organism needs to keep a cycle of 12h daylight - 12h darkness. The best way to keep it easy for you and not worry too much is to build a box with a bulb and a timer. Here are some points to respect:

• Use a “cool white fluo bulb”. Incandescent bulbs produce heat that could harm the organism in the end.
• Keep a distance of 14 inches between the organisms and the light source.
• Connect the light source to a timer program to switch on and off every 12 hours.
• Keep the box in a room that the temperature will be around 19°C to 24°C (optimal T°=22°C)

Alternative way

Adreas Greiner, an artist working with Pyrocystis Fusiformis, shared with me his own way to grow this Algae for artistic purposes. It is pretty similar, but with some variations that are quite useful in preparation of an exhibition.

• The use of Blacklight

The worst enemy of Bioluminescent Algae are Green Algae, that are often contaminating the cultures. As they grow faster, they will consume the nutrients and air in a higher level, which can affect the Bioluminescent Algae in a bad way. In order to limit the growth of the Green Algae, you can use a Blacklight bulb instead of a cool daylight bulb. This light will not affect the Bioluminescent Algae as they are still able to do Photosynthesis with it in opposition to the Green Algae that absolutely needs daylight in order to perform this process.

• The amount of light

A few weeks before the exhibition, extending the light cycle by a few hours (ex: 14h light / 10h dark) will provide more photosynthesis to the organisms and will thus gives more illumination during the night cycle.

Cultivating

Taking care of Pyrocystis Fusiformis is pretty simple. You don't have to feed them, but you do need to put them in the proper medium and to split the culture every 3 to 4 weeks. Otherwise, if the concentration of it is too high, they will not glow. To start with, you need a starting culture. It could be your friend's one that you split in two... they reproduce fast. Otherwise, you can buy a starting culture with different companies. I ordered mine here.

The medium use to grow Bioluminescent Dinoflagellates is f/2 medium. There is also some ways to make it without this proper medium by using Sea salt water. The thing to keep in mind though is that since the concentration of organisms in your culture is higher than the concentration you would find in nature. That means that you cannot use only Sea water as the organisms will lack some nutrients and will not grow with the best conditions possible. According to this website, you can use Micro Algae grow. If you are not into cooking your own medium, you can easily buy it on the web. There are many companies, like Carolina who sell it.

Every 3 to 4 weeks, you will need to split the culture in two and put some fresh medium. It is pretty straight forward as you just need a new clean container into which you pour half of your culture in it, and fill the rest with fresh medium. So for a 250ml culture, you would split it in two jar, so 125ml x 2, and then pour 125ml of fresh medium in it.

Documentation and references

• Carolina Care Sheet
• Pyrocystis Medium provided by Sciento: File:Pyrocystis Medium 2 pages.pdf