Dinkins Aquatic Gardens is owned and operated by a husband-and-wife team in the DFW area. Our mission is to help save the reefs by providing the highest quality live reef foods for every aquarium - from small biocubes, to mid-sized reef aquariums, to giant aquaculture facilities. By keeping your corals happy and healthy, you'll be able to frag them more frequently, thus taking pressure of the wild reefs. We've shopped our competition, and we're confident that you won't find darker live phyto or denser bottles of live pods!

Healthy Reefing!

Dinkins Aquatic Gardens uses lab-grade sanitation procedures every step of the way. We culture each strain of phytoplankton separately in seven gallon wide-mouth carboys. Once a batch of phyto finishes, we soak the carboy and rigid airline tubing in Alconox overnight, then scrub it by hand the following morning. After a very thorough rinse, we allow it to dry.

Once the carboys are dry,we thoroughly clean the inside with isopropyl alcohol and allow that to dry for about half a day. Late that evening, we fill the carboys with five gallons of saltwater and the appropriate amount of F/2 fertilizer from Florida Aqua Farms.

Our saltwater is made using seven stage RODI water mixed with Hw-Marinemix Professional Salt. This lab-made salt is very high quality and mixes completely clean with no residue.Once the saltwater is added, we then use bleach to chlorinate the water, which disinfects it. Next, we hook up the rigid tubing to our air pumps. The air from the pumps is filtered through 0.2 micron filters in order to remove any airborne contaminants. We let the chlorinated water bubble all night to thoroughly sanitize the water, the F/2, the rigid airline tubing, and the inside of the carboy. The following morning, we treat the water with sodium thiosulfate in order to remove the chlorine. Only after all this is done do we add one gallon of starter culture and begin the process of growing our new batch!

Live Phytoplankton Blend: A rich blend of six phytoplankton species intended to enhance coral growth and coloration, as well as microfauna diversity.

Reef Snacklebox: Our Reef Snacklebox is a mix of all three species of live copepods, along with a large batch of live rotifers.

Live Copepods: Copepods are available in single-species bottles (choose from Tigriopus, Apocyclops, and Tisbe).