are brine shrimp easy to "use"

[K_S_W_I_S_S]

???? i would like to try to see if i can use some to try to get any of my fish to breed... i want to try it on my cories and mmy tiger barbs... i would like to hear if you guys think that they are too complicated or not....

[blitzen25bm]

hatching them is easy, you can get the kits from fish stores. or you can buy live ones too and just rinse some out in a brine shrimp net and put them into the tank. i dont think your supposed to feed them too much at a time though. i did this to my baby fish and i think it messed up their stomachs.

[K_S_W_I_S_S]

what about getting larger fish to breed?? would i be able to grow them larger and feed to larger fish?? are brtine shrimp easy to grow out or not?

[K_S_W_I_S_S]

........ does anyone else have anything to say about them?? would it be easy to breed them?? if so, what should i use (i mean equipment) and i will keep them in a 2-5 gallon tank that i have somewhere around here... does anyone know of a website that is dedicated to brine shrimp??

[ChilDawg]

I know of no website, but, Neal Pronek, author of a fine book on Oscars said basically that you could not raise enough brine shrimp to keep an adult oscar sated unless you spent more on tanks for the brine shrimp than equipment, food, etc. for the Oscar. I think that this would apply to all large fish.

As for breeding--it is not often done with feeder brine shrimp as you have to set aside quite a few tanks and let their occupants grow for a while before breeding may occur. Just buy a large container of the cysts, keep them dry, and then raise them how others have done in the past. (Hint to the others: Chime in here!)

Raising them to good size can be done, but it is not worth the time, effort, and space, IMHO. There are foods with more nutritive value which take up less space.

~Matthew

[ChilDawg]

I found this at another site. You will have to right click to save the file, as Crosswinds no longer allows direct linking to their non-HTML files.

Raising Brine Shrimp (Right Click to Save Target As) (www.gwasoc.crosswinds.net/brinemethods.PDF)

[K_S_W_I_S_S]

lol @ (Hint to the others: Chime in here!)....... i dont really care about their nutritional value.. i just wanted them to try to induce breeding with some of my fish... i will also feed other normal food also...

[OrionGirl]

I agree. I maintained a tank of live brine while feeding some juvenile puffers, but as soon as I could get them eating something else, I tore that down. I never tried very hard at hatching them and raising them to a large size--usually the nauplii are the preferred critter, because they are more nutritional and can be fed to fry. Larger brine are readily taken by most fish, but without supplemental feeding quickly become little more than a chunk of chiton--not the best food source for fish. In order to raise them to a larger size, you have to feed them. They tend to be slow growers after they hit about 1/4 of an inch, so to feed them daily would require at least 5 tanks committed to them--ugh!

I would look into micro worms or vinegar eels for feeding the fry--much less space and effort for a better product. For conditioning adults, the brine won't be suitable--not enough fats for the female. She needs high protein and quality fats to develop eggs, so look into worms (red worms, live blood if you have a clean source, small earth worms will be readily taken as well), or quality frozen foods with fresh veggie supplementation.

[OrionGirl]

Low nutritional value means they won't encourage spawning behavior. Why else would you feed them?

[ChilDawg]

In that case, it won't help there either. However, there are other tricks to get cories to spawn...aquatic worms would be a good start rather than brine shrimp, and then, once they are fattened up, there is some messing with water parameters and such. If you are interested, I will try to find some great websites on that subject, but, for now, check out some of the articles on this site ( www.aquariacentral.com ). We can't use it often enough! :D

[K_S_W_I_S_S]

ok... i thought that just feeding them live foods induces them to spawn... and i have never heard of that site childawg, is it a good site?? :Pok, where would i need to go to get what i need to start any of the cultures you have mentoined?

[ChilDawg]

Drs. Foster and Smith probably have any of those cultures, along with Carolina Scientific Products, or any sites along those lines. Maybe an AC member has a culture which they would like to donate to you (or sell). Also, check out the classifieds in FAMA, TFH, or Aquarium Fish Monthly, as those always have good cultures ready to sell.

[K_S_W_I_S_S]

i have never seen them in dr foster and smith, do you have to call and ask them or what?

[OrionGirl]

Aquabid.com has lots of cultures for sale, fairly cheap.

Inducing spawning is more complicated that just what you feed. Check out http://www.planetcatfish.com/core/index.htm for more on breeding the cories. Not sure where would be a good resource for the barbs--typically tetras are egg scatterers, which means you need to be able to remove the parents from the tank to prevent cannabalism.

Trying to breed barbs and cories in the same tank is likely to be a big headache. Cories will eat the barb eggs, the barbs will eat cory fry.

[ChilDawg]

I'd check their online sites, but keep in mind that I said probably. If they don't have microworms, bloodworm, etc., cultures online, they probably don't have them for sale. Can I do a quick search and get back to you in about fifteen?

[K_S_W_I_S_S]

you can do what you want... ....

[ChilDawg]

True enough, OG.

Here is another site which sells a whole lot of livefood cultures and looks legit: http://www.thebugfarm.bigstep.com/

Yes, I was going to direct him to planetcatfish or scotcat eventually, but I figured that there were some good Shane Linder articles here, too.

I think that I found Tiger Barb spawning for other people before, but I will make sure, and I will get you a site.

[ChilDawg]

I really like www.badmanstropicalfish.com and this barb breeding vignette is from there:

Breeding
Male tiger Barbs are slimmer and more colorful than the females. They breed similar to other Barb species. The breeding tank should have a thin layer or no substrate and a few leafy plants and be as large as possible. Condition the spawners with the best food possible for a few days before transferring them to the breeding tank. They usually will spawn the morning after being introduced to the tank, a partial water change can also induce spawning. The female is the more active partner and will lead in the courtship. After chasing and false matings the pair will spawn in the plants, with the partners coming alongside each other and the male twisting around the female. The eggs are scattered among the plants and they can be quite large in number. Tigers, like most Barbs are spawn eaters and should be removed from the tank right after mating. The transparent eggs will hatch in about 24 hours at a temperature of 75 0 and the small young must be fed the finest of food like Brine shrimp Nauplii, once a little growth has taken place they are fairly easy to raise.

[K_S_W_I_S_S]

i wasnt going to try to breed them togeher. but thanks for the concern... wouldnt the cories eat the fry too???

[ChilDawg]

BBS (baby brine shrimp) are good for raising small fish from fry, but, beyond that, they have little value as far as I have learned. I would suggest going with a microworm culture in lieu of the Badman method for raising Tiger Barbs, but, other than that, the info is pretty solid.

[ChilDawg]

That is a possibility, but cories aren't well-known for eating living fish. As a matter of fact, it has been said in Burgess' "Colored Atlas of Miniature Catfish" that if you see Cories munching on a dead fish, you can pretty much rest assured that they didn't kill it.

[K_S_W_I_S_S]

ok, what all cultures are free swimming??

[ChilDawg]

Cories are pretty much well-known egg-eaters, though, and they will decimate a spawn through some roe-tasting.

[ChilDawg]

Originally posted by K_S_W_I_S_S
ok, what all cultures are free swimming??

Please explain what you mean by the question...we have been throwing random posts for a bit and I am now confused.

[K_S_W_I_S_S]

i mean what all food cultures are there that swim in the water instead of falling to the substrate... and i am very good at posting incomplete sentances....

[ChilDawg]

Daphnia and so-called green water (infusoria) would be the two of which I could think off the top of my head.

I think that, if you fed your fry using a worm feeder, you might have a better chance of maintaining water quality, but, just to be sure, a bare-bottomed tank would be a good way to make sure that detritus doesn't accumulate in the bottom.

[OrionGirl]

Vinegar eels will remain alive in the water column for several weeks, but will not reproduce in FW conditions. They won't dive into the substrate, either.

[K_S_W_I_S_S]

i dont have a problem with a bare bottom grow put tank...

[ChilDawg]

Okay, then my suggestion would be to culture vinegar eels, as OG said (I know, not FW, but culturing them and then adding them to the FW tank would be okay), and feeding them to fry and parents in the spawning tank.

I would leave the inside bottom of the tank bare, but paint the outside bottom with some sort of water-insoluble paint so as to lull the fish into the security provided by a tank that seemingly has a bottom.

(It is still easier to clean the bottom of a bare tank rather than one with substrate.)

[K_S_W_I_S_S]

yeah i know, it made it easy to clean my tank daily when i was growing con fry in it.... all i used was an airline tubing...

[ChilDawg]

I'm sorry to have stated the already-obvious to you, then!

[K_S_W_I_S_S]

well next time try telling me something i dont know :P well, its ok, you have already told me something i didnt have a clue about... i thought that feeding live food just made them in the mood to spawn...

[Heady]

I used brine shrimp to get my bettas in the mood.

The closer the fishes' environment is to what they are exposed to in nature, the more likely you'll get them to spawn. In nature, many fish have to chase down their food. In aquaria, it can get quite boring for them, just having to hunt down floating flakes or what have you. I suspect "the thrill of the hunt" can make the fish feel more alive/robust, and thus turning their fancy to thoughts of love...

Anyway, even though brine shrimp are not very nutritious, they do stimulate many fishes' desire to hunt. Hunting down and catching their food seems to make them more likely to spawn IME.

Brine shrimp are easy to keep. If you just keep aeration going and putting food in there, with occasional water changes you can have your own colony going. I used the adults to stimulate my bettas to breed and the newly hatched little guys to feed to their fry.