brine shrimp vs decapsulated brine shrimp

[ponderingky]

Hey thee,

The floating egg cases are one of the reasons I love my water container - all the cases float to the top and there is a small ledge that catches most (not all but most) of the unhatched eggs so what I get is mostly live bbs out of the spout.

I have had to use regular containers and I put a light at the bottom to attract most of the live bbs down, then use an air hose to syphon off the bbs, trying to leave the unhatched at the bottom. I would take my finger (or whatever you want) to knock a hole in the floating cases, then put my air hose in the hole created. My fry don't eat the unhatched or the floating cases, just need to clean them up on a regular basis to keep the water quality in good shape.

Hope that helps,

 

[sailedNJ]

What I do is...

1.) Temporarily cut off the air I have feeding into the hatchery.

2.) Temporarily turn off the light I have shinning into the hatchery (it provides some warmth but mostly it keeps the brine shrimp swimming & suspended in the water column because they are attracted to it).

Then wait a few minutes & let the bbs settle to the bottom of the container. By cutting off the air the empty egg shells float up & settle at the top & the bbs to settle at the bottom. Turning the light off also gets the bbs to settle to the bottom as well (in greater numbers).

I then stick a regular drinking straw in down to the bottom of the container & I cover the other end with my finger tip (but you can use an airline hose as well, your choice). This creates a mini syphon & my mouth doesn't come in contact with anything. I just repeat that serval times (bypassing the empty shells up top) until I get the amount of bbs I want out of the container & into a small plastic cup. Then i just dump what's in the cup into the tank I want to feed.

You want to avoid getting too many empty egg shells into your tank, but if you get a few it's no big deal (inevitably you'll get a few).

You can also use a napkin to "soak up" some of the empty shells off of the surface in your hatching container.

This is what I do.