Brine Shrimp and how to raise them

[Mick]

Brine shrimp are aquatic crustaceans that belong to the family Artemiidae of which there are several genus. They thrive in the salt lakes but strangely enough do not exist in the oceans. As juveniles they are full of lipids and unsaturated fatty acids making them an ideal food for juvenile fish and fry but as they mature the nutritional value lessens so many fish keepers will feed them up with other foods to provide more nutrients to the fish. The eggs can lay dormant for many years waiting for the right conditions before they hatch out, this has the advantage of protecting their species when climates are not suitable for them or if the salinity in the water is too low.

Hatching out the Brine Shrimp
There are many commercial hatcheries available to purchase but they can be quite expensive. It is just as easy to make your own and still get good hatch rates. All that is required is a 2ltr pop bottle and some airline and away you go.
To create the hatches, simply cut away the bottom third of the bottle to act as the base and then invert the top piece of the bottle , with the lid tightly screwed on, and place it into the bottom section.
Add your water and aquarium salt to a salinity between 1.020-1.025.(this works out roughly to 1.5 tablespoons per ltr of water)
The water needs to be constantly moving so place an airline into the water and add a flow restrictor valve as the stream of air bubbles needs to be toned down to a small but steady flow.
Only use quality eggs, the hatch rate will be much higher, add a small ammount to the water and place the hatcher to one corner of the room. There is no need to heat the water but they do hatch best at a room temperature of 26 degC.
Hatching should occur between 24-36 hours and when the airline is turned off the cysts should float to the top leaving the baby brine shrimp at the bottom. Allow 10 mins for the egg cases to float before syphoning off the brine shrimp for use.

When I ran my fish house I set up 3 bottles this way and added a new batch of eggs in rotation, this supplied me with food for the fry everyday. Any brine shrimp that were surplus to my requirements were simply placed in an ice cube tray with de-chlorinated water and frozen for use in the future.

If you do find that you are having problems hatching the eggs there are a couple of tricks to help you out,
Adding a small ammount of baking soda to the water will help to soften the egg cases thus making hatching easier.
Place a lamp near your hatchery to slightly warm up the water, it maybe that the room temperature is too low.

copyright
Mick
http://www.fishtankforum.co.uk

[Pencil2Print]

in addition, decapping the eggs will help with hatching as well.

Here's how to decap the eggs:

Take a small amount of eggs (1/2 a tsp at most) and soak them in aged water for about an hour to rehydrate them. Then add a dollop of regular old bleach and stir until the eggs turn orange. Drain them in a coffee filter or paper towel, and rise a bunch of times with fresh, clean water. Soak them in water with dechlorinator added, then simply suck out with an eye dropper and feed to your fishies. If you want to hatch them, just throw the decapped eggs in your hatchery and hatch them out.

I noticed with my eggs that the bbs that hatched from decapped eggs ended up gathering at the bottom of the bottle moreso than most. The other nice thing is that you can hatch them without baking soda, so technically you could just siphon the bbs out of the bottle directly into the fry tank. I still rinse mine out though, just to be safe.

NOTE: The above instructions- courtesy of a friend.

[Mick]

Good post, should be helpful to the others

[gordonuk]

I have been experimenting in hatching BBS quicker than 24 hours and now got it down to just under 12 hours.

I get some eggs and put them into a jug of boiling water straight from the kettle, i dont add any additive or anything. Over the space of an hour I add a bit more hot water so its always boiling for at least 1 hour.

I then get my bottle and fill it again with boiling water, add the salt then pour the eggs thats been fermenting for an hour into it.

I then put the whole bottle into my aquarium along with airhose (an agressive air supply) and let it work its magic.
The temp of my aquarium is 25c.

After 7 hours I can see a few of the BBS swimming about and by 12 hours there are millions!! swimming about.

This might not work for everyone but thought I would share.

[Mick]

Thanks for sharing that

[ziman347]

Hey I was wondering about your guys thoughts on using Kent Marine Micro-Vert Invertebrate Food for Fine Filter Feeders to feed to baby brine shrimp. I haven't bought it, but i dunno if i can find anything else to feed to the babies ha.

[Mick]

Never used it but Infusoria is cultured for free, that's the one I stick with

[ziman347]

i should feed the bbs the infusoria?

[Mick]

Yup and that way it gut loads them if you feed them to the fish

[ziman347]

i looked up infusoria (i had no clue what they were ha) and i saw lots of sites saying that they were microscopic organisms and something about needed for fish fry. -- is this the same infusoria you're talking about?