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)
It is possible to change their cycle, so you can decide what period of the day they would glow. The adaptation could take a few weeks though, keep that in mind.
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.