Phytoplankton - opinions?

[Reef_Geek]

IMO, adding phytoplankton to a reef tank for corals is a very nice to have, but plenty of folks have success without doing so. If you were to worry about the fertilizer in the phytoplankton water being poured into your tank, you can use the same philosophy as larval fish rearing... where you're trying to package nutrients into rotifers. So you could feed phytoplankton to rotifers, and in an hour, strain the rotifers through micron screen, then just rinse the rotifers off the screen and into the tank.

If you were breeding marine fish, however, phytoplankton is essential to larval rearing in 1) it has far more HUFAs than other feeds (ie yeast) for sustaining larval fish development, 2) in larval rearing water quality management (buffer pH in constant light, consumes nitrogenous wastes) especially where you can't really have much flow or filtering in a larval rearing tank, and 3) keep the water darker (along with painted tank sides) so larvae aren't wasting energy swimming against the glass.

Phyco Pure is a good product. I used to work next door to Eric at Algagen.