Courses / Preseason Preparation

Course Content

Prepare the Hatchery
Soak New Equipment Service Mechanical Equipment Prepare Your Nutrient Solution
Prepare Your Seed Spools
Define Your Production Target
Make Your Spools Choose a Seed String Wrap Your Spools
Resources & Tools
Provasoli's Enriched Solution (PES) Volume Calculator for Kelp Nurseries
Download file
Soaking and Leaching Spools for Kelp Nursery Production: Step-by-Step Guide
Download file
Lesson 2 Prepare Your Seed Spools

Back to: Preseason Preparation

Make Your Spools

Before the season begins, you’ll want to prep all of your seed spools. The number and size of your spools will depend on several factors:

  1. The size and height of your tanks

  2. How long your growlines are

  3. Whether your growlines have pre-spliced buoy connections

  4. The preference of your farmers

Seed spools can be made from bulk PVC pipe

Your spools should be no taller than the height of your tanks. The width of your spool will depend on how many linear feet of seed string you plan to wind onto each spool. Normally each spool will hold enough seed string to outplant on a single long line. This could range from 200 – 400 feet. Talk to the farmers you’re growing for to learn if they have a preference. Whatever spool dimensions you use, try to arrange them to optimize the space in your tank. 

It is best to use PVC that is no more than 20 inches long. A spool longer than that may be difficult to use during seeding because the seedstring will not unwind effectively as you pull the spool down the line. A spool that is too short is an inefficient use of space in your nursery system. GreenWave uses 4-inch PVC cut to 16-inch lengths and adds a notch and slit to make it possible to pull the spool off of the line after seeding without detensioning your growline a second time. Each of these spools holds ~400 feet of seedstring.

When you buy PVC, it will be dirty from the manufacturing and shipping process. Additionally, during the cutting process, PVC sawdust will be created and will be stuck to your spools. You will need to scrub and bleach your spools before winding them. Avoid letting the sawdust go down the drain by using a water bath to dip the spools in before washing. You can view a protocol for sanitizing your spools here.

GreenWave Resource
Sample Spool Diagram
Download

Determining exactly how many spools you’ll need to produce to meet your hatchery goals can be a little confusing. We’ve built a tool to help calculate the math for you. Use the tool to determine how many linear feet of seed string you can fit on a single spool depending on its diameter and length. Using this information, you can extrapolate how many spools you’ll need to produce to meet your season target for total linear feet. 

GreenWave Resource
Kelp Spool Quantity Calculator
View Resource

To give you some insight on how this is calculated, here’s an example of a spool calculation.
Our spools are 4″ PVC (14.14″ circumference) cut in 15″ lengths. Only 13″ out of the 15″ of the spool height is wrapped in our 1mm (0.0394″) seed string (leaving an inch at each end for easier handling and so they can fit into stands). 

Using this equation, our calculation is: Linear inches of seed string= (13/.0394)*(7.46) = 2463″= 390 linear feet

Definition

LSS

Length of seed string.

HSS

Height of seed string on spool.

DSS

Diameter of seed string.

CSPOOL

Spool circumference.

LSS= (HSS/DSS)*CSPOOL

Total amount of seed string on a spool= ([height of seed string on the spool]/[seed string diameter])* (circumference of the PVC).