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Shipping within the continental U.S., we have not had any problems with shipping our starter bottles. We recommend express shipping to Hawaii because the “slow boat” takes over a week, and that it too long for the algae to sit in a sealed bottle in the dark. For international orders involving live cultures, please contact us for more information.

If the bottle is kept with a loosened cap or cotton balls in the mouth so it can breathe, indoors in a bright location out of direct sunlight, it can live for weeks or even months. It can easily survive for a few days in a box or suitcase, especially if it does not experience temperature extremes (less than 50F, more than 90F). I have often flown with a bottle in my checked baggage. It will do especially well if you stir it up as often as you can (once a day is fine), or you can bubble it with an aquarium pump and a little tubing (included with the kit!).

We recommend using only half the bottle to start your first tank, so you can try again if you need to. Once you get your culture going, it’s good practice to put aside a bottle once a month or so, as a reserve in case anything goes wrong with your main culture

Please contact us if you would like us to ship you live Spirulina outside the U.S. Other sources would be algal culture libraries. The two main U.S. culture libraries UTex (www.utex.org), or NCMA (ncma.bigelow.org , formerly CCMP), ship internationally. In Europe, CCAP (http://www.ccap.ac.uk) or SAG (http://sagdb.uni-goettingen.de) can provide live Spirulina culture. In Australia, contact the CSIRO’s Australian National Algae Culture Collection (http://www.csiro.au/Organisation-Structure/National-Facilities/Australian-National-Algae-Culture-Collection.aspx), and ask for their Arthrospira maxima (strain CS-328). If you can get a bottle of our culture, we do recommend this, as we provide a much larger amount of culture (almost 1 liter) of healthy, multiplying algae, grown in the same exact medium that we sell and give recipes for in our instructions. Also, our prices are much better…

Our kits work well with 10-gallon aquarium tanks, so this is a good place to start. We like these tanks because they are quite inexpensive ($15 or less), are made of glass and pure silicone — safe materials for contact with food! — and because light penetration is fairly good, so the culture can get thick. In an unshadowed south-facing window, you should be able to get about half a tablespoon (4 grams) every day from such a tank. Community members have had excellent luck, though, with everything from 2 liter bottles to giant fish tanks and even greenhouse-covered ponds. There is no upper limit to how big you can grow; take over your back yard!

Grow-up proceeds in stages — see the instructions; you put half the contents of the bottle into one quarter of the tank (2.5 gallons for a 10-gallon tank) to start with, which results in a very thin culture at first, which will thicken over time. After a couple of weeks, the algae should be thick enough that you can double the culture volume, then after a week or so, double again, so that the tank is full. Once the tank is full, the algae is thick (3cm Secchi or less, see below), and the pH has been at least 10 for 24 hours, you should be able to harvest. This process can take from 3 to 6 weeks.

Our nutrient mixes use pure, food-grade nutrients that are entirely water-soluble. Growing Spirulina using only organic fertilizer is challenging because most organic fertilizers (manure, compost, etc.) are largely insoluble in water. Extracting nutrients from such material, and purifying them so that only the desired nutrients are present in your culture, is a rather advanced topic, beyond the scope of most starting algae farmers. We may teach more about these techniques in the future.