Orange Algae? What's wrong?

[BensonAlgae]

We are growing Nannochloropsis in an 10 gallon aquarium tank as well as a 2 liter bottle. The algae has turned an orange color. The algae in the bottle has turned an orange color and there are large clumps swirling around in it too. There are also a few brown spots. Is this the algae or has it been contaminated?

[Algae Maffiosi]

A picture would be helpfull. What kind of medium are you using? May be some spore elements are missing.

[BensonAlgae]

Found out the problem bot enough nutrients.

[Hanh Tran]

Found out the problem bot enough nutrients.

Hi "BensonAlgae",
it just happened to us that one of our algal cultures also turned orange, but the cells still look green under microscope and there is a tiny little orange dot on the outer part of each cell. So it seems like the orange color comes from the pigment produced by algae; but I am not sure why only that culture produced pigment since we started inoculating all the cultures (but different species) at the same time. Do you think that turning orange is just found in Nannochloropsis species? how did you find out that "not enough nutrients is the reason?"

Thank you very much in advance

MH

[Algae Maffiosi]

I am also curious about why your algae turned orange. Care to explain?

EDIT:

I figured to share my experiance with orange color with you.

I centrifuged a mixed culture unspecified freshwater algae cultivated with (NH4) sample that was in batch for 2days, N- starved. After centrifugation the upperpart of the pellet was a orange/brown color. Still dont have a clue what that was all about.

Freezedried and stored in the fridge for when i have time to play with it.

[OilGirl]

I know that I'm going to sound completely moronic, but I wouldn't mind knowing more about this overall process. I gathered this much from this thread: algae (Nannochloropsis) was grown and it turned orange. The possible reasons why: contamination or lack of nutrients.

Now, I'm curious to know how this process even begins. How does one even go about "growing" or cultivating algae? Also, what types of nutrients does algae need to keep it from turning the color it did? And one more question: What does one do when this orange color comes to be? Do you start over or are there ways to alleviate matters?