After hatching brine shrimp eggs, is there any way to get them to grow larger? I want to be able to feed them to some larger fish. Thanks, Rich
Brine Shrimp
- Thread starter richm20
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richm20 said:
I've also often thought of raising brine shrimp to adulthood...there are lots of sites on the internet that discuss raising brine to maturity, like this one - http://www.petplace.com/fish/how-to-raise-brine-shrimp/page1.aspx - I think I'll give it a shot too!
I ussually grow them out for about a week after hatch, feeding them on brewing yeast disolved in water, just enough so the water is a tad cloudy works fine. If you're hatching them out in the inverted bottle type setup with airstone at the bottom, or something similar, use about a quarter of the number of eggs than what you'd use for just straight hatching. The lower density will help prevent the culture bombing. Once you notice individuals taking the sub-adult form, you'll need to turn down the aeration to just enough to move the water around (or remove the airstone from the airline) as the turbulance and fine bubbles can damage their swimming appendages. Also helps to change some water every few days, I ussually just siphon out 50% through some old airline with an airstone in it, the airstone stops you sucking out any young nauplii, sadly it also slows the process down significantly, so be patient.
Oh and lastly, probably don't need to mention it, but just in case. Make sure you use marine salt and not table salt for your culture
Oh and lastly, probably don't need to mention it, but just in case. Make sure you use marine salt and not table salt for your culture
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I forgot to get back to this post for a bit. When I first saw it, something happened when I tried to post my reply and nothing on the site would work for me, but all my other forums were ok so I figured the site was down temporarily.
Growing brine shrimp to adult on a very small scale is as simple as having a few nauplii in a relatively large amount of water, with some food for them to feed on.
Growing brine shrimp on a scale where one can expect a reasonable harvest of adults, is much more involved and time consuming doing water changes.
It is much better to buy live adults from the LFS where possible.
In my case, I don't know of any supplier of live adult brine shrimp in Canada, so I grow my own in spite of the work involved.
While it can take some time and experimenting to get things so you have a reasonable yield, it is definitely possible to do, and for most people the work would be less than what I get involved in due to my many tanks and the fact I sell to others as well.
On my web site, I have a page that describes how I grow my brine, and I haven't updated yet to include the fact I'm now using ammonia rid products to lessen the water changes required due to the build up of ammonia from food decay.
Also, if anyone grows phyto, that food would work better than the cryopaste that I use.
RAISING BRINE SHRIMP TO ADULT
Growing brine shrimp to adult on a very small scale is as simple as having a few nauplii in a relatively large amount of water, with some food for them to feed on.
Growing brine shrimp on a scale where one can expect a reasonable harvest of adults, is much more involved and time consuming doing water changes.
It is much better to buy live adults from the LFS where possible.
In my case, I don't know of any supplier of live adult brine shrimp in Canada, so I grow my own in spite of the work involved.
While it can take some time and experimenting to get things so you have a reasonable yield, it is definitely possible to do, and for most people the work would be less than what I get involved in due to my many tanks and the fact I sell to others as well.
On my web site, I have a page that describes how I grow my brine, and I haven't updated yet to include the fact I'm now using ammonia rid products to lessen the water changes required due to the build up of ammonia from food decay.
Also, if anyone grows phyto, that food would work better than the cryopaste that I use.
RAISING BRINE SHRIMP TO ADULT
I bought some live adults from my LFS to feed to my rainbows and I saved a few and put them in a 2.5 gallon tank with about 1 gallon of water. They have been in there for well over a month and close to two. They have laid eggs but none really have hatched because I do not have the air on that high. I Just separate the last 10 or so that are still living into a little container, and I noticed that in the tank there are babies! Pretty sweet. I mixed up some yeast water and added a couple drops. I am hoping I can grow the little ones up. I just want to do it for educational purposes. Also, I think the adult shrimp do better when you do not change the water. Well siphon the stuff off the bottom like every week or every other. That is about all I have done. When I have hatched eggs in the past, the longest I was able to keep the babies alive was 6 days. I hope I have better luck! Any advice would be great!
Water changes aren't necessary for low density growth of the brine, but must be done to rid the ammonia that is fatal to nauplii and juveniles before they can get to adult, if you are growing them in denser populations. While the adults are more tolerant of the higher levels, it doesn't do much good if they die before getting to that stage. If your density of brine is like this or more, you need changes.
If the water conditions are good, then the brine will not produce cysts (eggs), they will produce live born nauplii.
Before feeding them to your fish, you should gut load them with huffa's like Selco, Selcon, etc, or with a high protein product like spirulina.
This includes ones purchase from the lfs as they don't normally gut load them before you buy them.
If the water conditions are good, then the brine will not produce cysts (eggs), they will produce live born nauplii.
Before feeding them to your fish, you should gut load them with huffa's like Selco, Selcon, etc, or with a high protein product like spirulina.
This includes ones purchase from the lfs as they don't normally gut load them before you buy them.
It has to be fine enough to stay in suspension when the water is lightly aerated.
Personally, I would use spirulina flake food, crush it up and place it in the centre of a piece of dense cloth, fold up the cloth and twist to form a "ball" of spirulina.
Soak the ball in a mug of salt water overnight in the refrigerator and then you can massage the "ball" in the brine container until it fogs the water with fine particles of spirulina.
Keep the spirulina ball in the refrigerator.
I would guess you could use the pills wrapped in the cloth and soaked to become soft enough to massage through, but I would guess it to be much more expensive than using flake spirulina food.
Personally, I would use spirulina flake food, crush it up and place it in the centre of a piece of dense cloth, fold up the cloth and twist to form a "ball" of spirulina.
Soak the ball in a mug of salt water overnight in the refrigerator and then you can massage the "ball" in the brine container until it fogs the water with fine particles of spirulina.
Keep the spirulina ball in the refrigerator.
I would guess you could use the pills wrapped in the cloth and soaked to become soft enough to massage through, but I would guess it to be much more expensive than using flake spirulina food.