Phytoplankton and Zooplankton: How to Culture

 

Zooplankton

Zooplankton is a microscopic animal, which means sometimes it may be difficult to see them very clearly with the naked eyes , but when held closely in a bowl you will see them moving especially when thy are large in numbers

 As a group of tiny water  animals they feed on free  microscopic algae (Phytoplankton ) in the water and they reproduce in Millon's within 24hour.

Phytoplankton

Though this is based on how much their own food is available.

Phytoplankton is also known as microalgae is a plant. It can grow and multiply using fertilizer and a light source to photosynthesize.

Why produce zooplankton?

 

Zooplankton are actually produce to feed baby fish up to 0-8weeks old. And right here in Africa especially west Africa we are situated in the tropics with rainfall almost all year round and. Abundance of availability of sunlight

 The is the best natural resources  in the world and we are very lucky. But how lucky could we really say we are , when we don't take advantage of it and produce agricultural products larger and cheaper to even earn us foreign exchange?

What do you need to produce zooplankton?

-You need a plastic tank or a tarpaulin pond or concrete pond.

-You need manure either from  cow, pig ,chicken etc 

-You need green or grey or old water ..

-Not tap water 

-We need mosquito nets

-We need a wood to store the mixture.

If you have someone close to you who have a fish pond ..You can easily get this water  from their ponds. If you don't .get water from your well , borehole or stream , add few drops of organic broad spectrum or organic foiler to the fresh water and leave it under the sun for photosynthesis to take place ..

In about few days you discover the colour of the water gradually changing to lemon then to light green and dark green , wait until you get enough dark green,darker than in the picture above(left) before you can use it to start up your zooplankton culture (right on the picture above)

Old water are living water because it contains growing microscopic organism. Its also best for fermentation of poultry feed. After you see its been dissolve. then you can then ferment it by pouring the mixture in a plastic bucket and cover it for 3 days.

Next step is to ferment the cow manure ...

This is done by dissolving or mixing the manure with the grey water. 1kg of manure can be mixed with 25liters of water.

 But every morning you must use your stick to stir the mixture once a day for 3 days. By this time the mixture of manure and  old  water is well fermented.The reason we stir every morning  is to remove excess gas build up that occur during fermentation and also to make sure the  mixtures are homogeneously mixed.

You can Buy Fingerlings in Nigeria from AfriShopOnline via this link.


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