So excited! My baby brine just hatched!

[AnnetteG]

I'm probably as excited as I was when I was a kid and I hatched my first "Sea Monkeys", LOL! For different reasons now though. hehehe SO, now that they're hatched, once I skim out the shells, what should I do with the babies? Dump them in the tank? I was thinking of dumping them into the fuge. If I do that, will they grow up and multiply, and add diversity and all that?

So cool.....I can't wait to see my fish go nuts when I turn them loose in the tank! I know I'll put at least SOME of them in there. ;)

[boomsticks]

They very well could surrvive in the fuge they do however like higher salinity than most crustaceans....hence the name "brine shrimp" lol

[Fishieness]

it's possible that they would grow and multiply, with with all the fish/corals/pumps/lack of food, it is very very unlikely that they would do it on their own.
Just net them out with a brine shrimp net (you dont want to add that gross water to your tank) and dump them in the tank. you can do it over the period of a few days too.

[FeatherDuster]

Why on earth would you want to feed them to your fish?

They are suppose to be used for this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUgadMufzHI

[AnnetteG]

Oh darn, that looks like so much more fun! :rofl:

I skimmed out as many of the shells as I could and just dumped the bottle of them in the tank. I'm doing a water change tomorrow anyway. The fish seemed to love it and everyone was fat and sassy. Tonight, looking in the tank with my flashlight, there are TONS of little guys swarming the glass. I suppose it's just the brine, although I was surprised. Could be amphipods and/or copepods too though as I just added in a batch of a 1000 the other day to the refugium.

[FeatherDuster]

The fish seemed to love it and everyone was fat and sassy.

lol nice to see you spoiling your fish. However you are giving me a bad image. My goby just glared at me right as if to say "See! She loves her fish."

It will interesting to see how long they can survive. Definitely keep us updated.

[rayjay]

There are some basic rules that apply when feeding brine shrimp to a tank.
First, the cysts should be sterilized in bleach water for 30 minutes (17 ml of 5% bleach in a gallon of water) to destroy the bad bacteria that is harboured by the cysts. These bacteria occasionally are bad enough to wipe out a whole system.
When the brine hatch out, let the container sit for about 10 minutes and then siphon out with a piece of air line tubing, the brine between the top layer of cyst shells, and the bottom layer of unhatched cysts.
RINSE WELL with fresh water before feeding the shrimp to your tank.
Brine shrimp will not survive in any container that has predators in it, be it fish or larger shrimp or corals that can capture them.
If there is any significant water flow, the brine cannot make their own way in the water but will go with the flow. They will get sucked up into return pumps and be destroyed.
There is a "TON" of misinformation in print and on the net about brine shrimp.
One of those pieces of misinformation is that they need higher salinity levels.
In fact, they will grow in probably the widest range of salinities of any creature, from near brackish, (I raise mine at 1.017) to salinities so high nothing else will survive.
For the REAL facts on brine shrimp, artemia, see the links at the bottom of my brine shrimp page, especially the one authored by the people at the Artemia Reference Centre at the University of Gent.
BRINE SHRIMP GROWING INFO (http://www.angelfire.com/ab/rayjay/)

[Horchata]

yeah i doubt they'd survive without the high salinity. maybe a couple days, but id say thats it

[rayjay]

yeah i doubt they'd survive without the high salinity. maybe a couple days, but id say thats it
Not sure how high is high to you but as I mentioned, I grow mine and keep them at 1.017. The brine will live at this range for 3 to 4 months, and reproduce live nauplii instead of the cysts that will be produced at high salinity levels like 1.100 to 1.200 as in the Great Salt Lake seasonal highs get to be.
In my previous post I didn't link properly to my brine page so I'll do it again here.
BRINE SHRIMP GROWING INFO (http://www.angelfire.com/ab/rayjay/brineshrimp.html)

[AnnetteG]

I'm going to get one of those little hatchery thingies before I do this again, to make it easier. I've still got loads of little thingies swarming the glass at night now. I think it's amphipod and/or copepod babies. I just got a batch of 1000 mixed from this seller on ebay and it added SO much life to my refugium and I shook out one of the little filter pads they send them in into the main tank as well, so I'm sure that's what they are, especially since they are capable of swimming and don't just get tossed around in the tank like you said Brine do.

[rayjay]

What is most likely to be swimming on your front glass panel after lights out, is mysid shrimp, that look like minature cleaner shrimp, very tiny, and very nutritious for those that can catch them. (larger ones range from 1/8 to 1/4 inch)
Most of the other small life will stay in the rockwork even at night like the mysids do in the day time.
You can make your own hatchery that works as good or better than the ones you pay for just by using pop bottles, or you may call them soda bottles. Ours are 2 litre bottles so I'm not sure what your sizes will be but just cut the bottom off a bottle, invert it, and sit it in the bottom of another bottle that has been cut off just enough so the bottle cap of the inverted bottle just touches the inside bottom of the second so that it has some stability.
Then, connect a piece of rigid air line tubing to a length of flexible air line and connect to the air pump.
Some people make a little stand out of wood with holes for several bottles so they can keep a daily feeding of freshly hatched nauplii for feeding.
Conversly you can use multiple pop bottles like I described, and place them next to one another using plastic close line pins to connect them together.
I sit my bottles in a styrofoam container because I use so many.
Here is a pic of the bottles removed from the styrofoam with 3 pop bottles (soda bottles) on the right side of the pic and empty ones standing against the wall behind. The second picture shows the rigid air line tubing connected to the flex air line and inserted into the inverted pop bottles.

http://www.angelfire.com/ab/rayjay/images/brineshrimp2.jpg

http://www.angelfire.com/ab/rayjay/images/brineshrimpa.jpg