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Featured reading: "Culturing Phytoplankton for Reef Aquarium Food"

How to grow your own phyto at home — feed for filter feeders, copepods, and hard-to-keep fish like mandarins. A genuinely useful skill for an intermediate reefer.

April 15, 2026Source: Nano-Reef

Live phytoplankton is one of the cheapest, highest-leverage things you can add to a reef tank — it feeds copepods (which feed mandarins, anthias, and most wrasses), it feeds clams and gorgonians directly, and it's a step toward a self-sustaining food chain in your system.

Buying it is fine; culturing it cuts the cost to near zero and gives you better cell density than anything shipped. This Nano-Reef guide walks through equipment (translucent containers, aeration, light), starter cultures, and the daily/weekly rhythm.

If you keep mandarins, anthias, gorgonians, or are running a refugium, this is a couple of hours of weekend reading that pays off for years.

Read the full article at Nano-Reef

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