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