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Hello,

I'm doing some simple experiments on cyanobacteria and got tired of biking every weekend to the nearby lakes to replenish and refresh my supply. So, I decided to try to grow them home in a jar.

I searched the net and it looks like everybody out there - swimming pool owners, aquarium enthusiasts, and garden-pond-maintenance-type guys - are having those monster cyanobacteria blooms popping up everywhere despite all effort to kill them using anything from chlorine bleach to flamethrowers. So I thought (how stupid of me!) that _breeding_ them should be easy.

I put a jar of clean water, added some nutrients (more on this later), individually selected several cyanobacteria strands, plopped those in the new jar, put them out in the sun, and told them to go forth and mupltiply.

They didn't.

In fact, they just sat down there at the bottom, like they've never heard of cell division. They just stare back at me, looking blue-green pretty and playing innocent.

I guess the problem is one of the following:

a) I didn't get the nutrients right. I tried everything, from various combinations of tiny bits of plant fertilizer, a small amount of sodium bicarbonate, drop of sugar, even a tiny bit soap, to completely nothing. None of these individually or in combination seem to work.

b) Water might be wrong - I'm using filtered water that had stayed open for a week or so to give any chlorine or whatever they put into it to evaporate. What more can they want? San Pellegrino?!

c) Sun might be bothering them - maybe they are getting too-much UV radiation. But should I put them in the shade?

d) Or, having found all that luxury living to their taste, they thought for a moment about having kids then went "Naaah" and continued drinking their martinis and enjoying the sun.

Can someone give me advice what to try next? Romantic music and subdued lighting?

- Alex

If you haven't found your answer yet, I found this site that may be helpful?

References - Cyanobacteria, Blue Green Algae, Slime algae, red slime algae 3

Let me know!

My wife used to grow this stuff (I won't even try to spell the species) in the lab for toxicology research about 40 years ago. She says to get rid of the tap water, becuase the chloramines left over from chlorination will cause problems. Get some of the lake water and filter it. Use a bit of grass fertilizer and a bit of iron. She will try to dredge up a paper or two when she is at work tomorrow.

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John Karlsson
Hope Valley, RI

Don't count your chickens until they have burned their bridges behind them.

avtansky,

I have pdf files of two papers for you (or anyone else that might want them). Just give me your e-mail address.

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John Karlsson
Hope Valley, RI

Don't count your chickens until they have burned their bridges behind them.

Thanks. I managed to keep the algae alive for long periods and possibly even to get it grow (although quite slowly) by using lake water and adding some fertilizer and a bunch of minerals that I found in some papers. I think I'm still missing something, because I could not get vigorous growth. The jars are in sunlight, so this is not the problem.

About my address - it is avtanski at gmail and then you know what (sorry, I'mwriting it this way to avoid getting too much spam). I appreciate taking the time to find those papers. Thanks!

karlssoni, I would love to read the papers. I have a few water samples that I am working with and I think the information could help me. I poured distilled water into a couple of samples thinking that would help but no luck.

My email is: syrinx7 at cox.net

Thank you.

Kimberly

The easiest way I've came across is to stir some soil in a bit of pond water and filter it.

I'm thinking it's the water. Mine appeared in my aquarium after the water went bad for almost everything else.

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