Brine Shrimp?

ambrosiamonkey

Doing the Community Thing
Dec 9, 2004
63
0
0
Berkeley, California
For some unknown reason, none of the LFS in my area have live brine shrimp at the moment, and they are telling me none will be available until the middle of February.

I have frozen brine shrimp, which most of my fish feed on eagerly, but the pair of killifish are slower to go after the frozen, and I'm worried that the tetras and rainbows (both of which are pretty greedy feeders) are gobbling it all up before the killifish get more than one or two. The live brine shrimp swim around and take longer to get eaten, and the killifish seem more enthusiastic about live over frozen.

Given that I'm looking at one month with no brine shrimp, I'm wondering about hatching my own. How well does that kind of thing work? Is it a lot of bother for not much product, or is it fairly easy? Any tips or tricks I should know about?
 
I bought a brine shrimp hatchery, which is a black box with a clear plastic collection vial on top. The shrimp hatch and swim up to the light, into the vial. Not hard at all. But you don't have to have a hatchery. You can put them into a jar of salt water... put it in a warm place. Some recommend putting an airstone in the jar too for circulation.

Of course... the result that I feed my fish are the tiny hatchlings. I've never tried growing the things to a larger size.
 
Heard of sea monkeys?

I suggest getting a kids sea monkey kit and grow you own, its very easy and you get loooads, you never run out.
 
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