Spirulina - Setting Up a Home Cultivator

in #food5 years ago (edited)

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I didn't know you can grow algae at home like this. The process sounds quite difficult and long but the result must be very rewarding. I would love to have my very own grown spirulina at home instead of the powder that I have to buy every time. How did you get to such scientific growing of whatever you need to grow? To me it sounds like lots of chemistry which I was not very good at :)

Thank you for sharing!

Well, it's really not any more complicated than maintaining a fish tank, and once it's up and running you are flooded in spirulina. With the big tank for certain, but even with this little one there should be a continuous supply of it. But give me a couple of weeks, and I'll write more about it. And yes, the reward is delicious creamy spirulina that tastes a thousand times better than the dried stuff (yuck!).

How did I get into it? It all started with the question: what can I grow in an urban setting? After mushrooms, kombcha and other probiotic drinks, spirulna was the next logical option. The rest was simply following the info trail, meeting like minded people, and then trying it for myself.

I can't even imagine how the 'fresh' thing taste like! It's simply not available in Switzerland as the sea is far far far away :) I'll be looking forward to reading more about this topic..

Recently, I've been looking into fermentation but didn't get the guts yet to start. It all somehow looks so scary. I travel a lot and I'm afraid that my products would die by the time that I would get home (if they would be still in progress of course)

But I think it would help me to meet like minded people. So it's a good point from you. I will see if there are any communities like this around here..

oh, you don't need to live by the sea to grow spirulina! I live in Mexico City, which is even further from the sea than Switzerland. All you need is table salt, and not even a lot: five grams per liter.
And you're right, cultures are just like pets. Spirulina is actually a lot like a cat: it fends pretty much for itself, so it doesn't need you as much as a dog, still you can't completely leave it alone for an extended time.

That is good to know! I will look at my schedule and hopefully will find at least a month this year that I will be at home so that I can try something :)

Have a great weekend!

That is super impressive..wow. I think my experiments fail as I lack scientific rigour.

Where do you get the spirulina from in the first place?

Calling @alchemage .. I think he'd appreciate this one.

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Well yes, that's the tricky part! I got mine from my buddy Gerardo, who's also a keen spirulina grower. Otherwise there's this company SpirulinaViva who can sell you cultures and ship it to anywhere in Mexico. But there are countries, such as Canada, where I have not been able to locate anyone selling it in the entire six months while I was there last year. In the States it's easy, you can order it from the huge retailer that used to be an on-line bookstore.

Thanx for the re-steem, by the way! :-)


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I use spirulina in my diet and pay a fortune for it. Where do you get it in liquid? The kind I get is usually from Hawaii and is black. I wonder if that is ok now? So many questions! I hope you will keep posting more about this.

Black??? Wow! My spirulina has turned black at times, but it always came with a horrible, rotten smell, that made me not even want to try it. I'm no fan of dry spirulina either, as I find it much worse tasting than the fresh stuff, but that blackness was even beyond that. This happened when I let it dry out, when it was pushed out of the water by more spirulina growing under it, or once we tried to put it in a quesadilla, and almost immediately it turned black when exposed to heat. One time I also tried to deliver it, and on the 1 hour+ bus ride it melted (I usually store it in the freezer) and started dying. By the time I arrived it was but an awful black goo. So in my experience black means not good. Deep green almost blue is the best, light green on the way to yellow means trouble but still okay to eat, brown is on the way out, and black is gonner. But there may be different varieties, I don't know.

I got the cultures from a friend. As I replied to another comment, it depends on where you are. In Canada I could not find anyone to sell me any, as hard as I tried. In the US you can order it on-line without problems (though for a pretty penny, which in my opinion is way worth it. If you do it right, it may be the last spirulina you'll ever need to pay for).

Maybe. I will try to find it. I am in Malaysia, so I might be on quite a quest! The powdered type I have had was so dark, and I now think it was dead as you say. I just use in is drinks and have never tried to heat it.

Who knows... you may be surprised in Malaysia. As I said, in Canada it was impossible to find, while in Mexico all you need to do is do a quick web-search, and they ship it to your place for not even a lot of money. Plus there are other people growing it. Since weather in Malaysia tends to be nice and hot, I could imagine it being a popular thing to grow. (As I said, keeping the water temperature above 20°C is the most tedious part of the whole thing.) Good luck finding it!

Thank you! I am going to be keeping my eyes open. They sell the jarred spirulina in the pharmacies here, so they know it is for health :)

That is a very interesting process! Great details and instructions!

Thank you! Please stay tuned for further details on checking the concentration, harvesting, and of course using this great food.

Fascinating to learn about growing this wonderful power food at home! Do you think the beta-carotene makes it harder to get a sun burn?

Hahaha, could be! Maybe that's how I managed to get away without a sunburn...? Though at the time I didn't spend so much time in the sun either...

Awesome post, growing spirulina (and chlorella) has long been an interest of mine.

But as a biology major, and having read a whole lot on growing spirulina in the past several years, without tops on your containers, how do you prevent it from being contaminated by other, potentially toxic, algae spores?

The only people I know who grew spirulina in the past checked it regularly for contamination, microscope and all, and so please understand, I'm not snarking, but I am concerned.

Hope you can set my mind at ease.

That said, if your method really works, it is exponentially easier than I've been led to believe. Thanks again.

Well, I'm not sure if this is going to set your mind at ease... but what I've been told, is that in such a highly alkaline environment other algae would simply not thrive. My last cultivator was also anything but hermetically sealed, as you can see in the video. It's basically a tent, a series of tarps, but the stuff grew in it like crazy, and the only contaminant I had to pick out occasionally were flying insects that had fallen into the water.

Cool, great to know.

I've been mostly talking to, and reading, researchers and scientists used to formal clean room set ups, so their mindset isn't exactly on DIY procedures.

Love Spirulina, and looking forward to getting this going!!!

For those considering this, you can buy cultures on eBay and Amazon, just check out the reputations of the seller first. Some Scientific supply companies also sell to the public.

Also, for anyone raising tilapia or other fish in an aquaponic system, consider raising your fry in a "green" aquarium full of beneficial algae.

When I got my first certificate in aquaponics, the guy giving the class told us that they had taken a single hatching of fry and separated them into two groups.

The first batch of fry was raised in a "green" aquarium, full of algae (as I recall they were using chlorella), and given no supplemental feed. The second batch were raised in a typical "clean" aquarium and fed crushed pellets.

By the time the fry were ready to be moved into the main system, the fry raised in the green aquarium were twice as long, and between three and four times the weight or more, as those raised in the clean tank and fed pelleted food.

Less work and far better results! Works for me.

And spirulina, also being beneficial and high in protein, not to mention far easier to digest than chlorella, should work at least as well.

Good luck!

Wow! Thanks for such detailed information.

You're welcome!
Obviously I've been studying this stuff for a while. ;-)

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I had never heard of spirulina before. Thanks for the info.
Once you harvest this spirulina what do you do with it?

What I do with it? Eat it of course! If not selling it at the market. To store it I put in in the freezer. But in a few weeks when it's ready I'll make sure to post about it, showing exactly how to use it.

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