My Simple Square Box PhotoBioReactor PBR Design using recycled soda bottles

In an earlier post I showed my first PBR design from 2X4x and a leaning vertical tube design. While this design worked well. It was a real pain to detach and reattach the hoses at the bottom of the tube to clean or empty their contents.



Then I designed a semi-circular PBR using an instructable and alot of guess work to build a semicircular shaped pbr  and while it made removing and installing the tubes a little bit easier it was still too cumbersome and gangly to work with. Setting the lighting and air pump timers was a bitch. Also I dont think the tubes were close enough to the grow light.

Here are a couple of images for reference.

THE main thing I was having trouble with was using the vertical tubes, each time.
The last straw with the tubes was when I noticed that despite the air stones at the bottom of the tubes I was getting SIGNIFICANT setting below the air stones at the bottom of the tubes.

 

Again not very practical. It was fun to build but just sucked.

I found that every time I took a sample it was in a 20 oz soda bottle and for some reason just adding a 100 ml of miracle gro algae media I created earlier the algae grew better than in the tubes.

So I decided to eliminate the tubes and just use recycled soda bottles and design a simple easy to change and clean and move things around in pbr. I know a run on sentence.

Here is the first square design made from nothing more than 2x4s - oh I had to buy the plexiglass but the 2x4s I alread had, from the previous leanto design.

This design was WAY easier to use and more practical. I decided to try putting the light underneath.
This didnt provide enough light so I redesigned it to be enclosed ( slightly more aesthetically pleasing - and lighting from the side of the bottles for better light penetration.

Here is what I came up with - definitely not my final design - designing is the fun part!!

All from a 4'X4' sheet of osb, I had it laying around.



screwed together with 2x2s


Placed the air pump and timers on top for easy access.






Two 4 gang controls in back.
Video of prettier design in operation - I used mirror tiles to try reflect light back up towards samples.

So the dark green sample, Second from the left is the sample I have been keeping going every since summer. I am still yet to get anything to grow inside my incubator so I have also placed 2 more samples of my summer sample to the far left.

TIME TO USE MY MICROSCOPE TO IDENTIFY WHICH ALGAE SPECIES ARE IN THE SAMPLE, AND WHICH IS THE DOMINANT.  BUT I REALLY WANT MY COLONIES TO GROW SO I CAN ISOLATE ...........