# My bioluminescent algae is dying!



## Björn (Nov 13, 2010)

hi!

on my last holiday I experienced bioluminiscent algae one night while swimming in the sea. that was really beautiful and my idea was to grow some of it at home and make it a birthday present for a good friend.

I stumbled upon an wikihow article and ordered a starter culture from empco org. however, I did not order the growth medium because I had to ship it to europe and I'd like to grow larger quantities.

to make my own growth medium I took destilled water, put sea salt in until it reached a salinity of about 38000 mg/L and finally I merged the salt water with some f/2 growth medium. to get a very clean growth container, I took a bottle of mineral water and emptied it just before putting the salt water inside.

unfortunately, the algae in the bottle died within a single day. now there's only a small amount of algae left from the starter culture and next time I have to do everything right.

do you have some experience with sea water algae? do you have any idea, what could have been gone wrong during the process?

do you think there could be to little co2 in the water? do you think the algae could die that fast if there are too much nutritions in the water?

thanks for your help!
björn

p.s: sorry, I was not allowed to post links to the wikihow article and the growth medium.


----------

