Keeping Brine Shrimp Alive - Kindly guide me

[Kashta]

I have no idea. A lot would depend on the conditions they are in during transport... temperature, salinity, food, oxygenation, cleanliness... Eight hours is a long time if someone just dumps them into a bucket or plastic bag with nothing more to keep them alive.

I found this too which talks about how to "enrich" them to make them more nutritious as adults. Sounds rather complicated.

Well, I've been talking about enrichment throughout this article, but I haven't really given you any guidelines for how exactly to accomplish that enrichment. Let's use brine shrimp as an example, and go through how to enrich your food before feeding it to an aquarium. When Artemia nauplii first hatch (Instar I), they do not have a complete gut, and it is not until they develop to Instar II that the baby brine start to feed. The time of development to Instar II depends on a variety of factors (most importantly temperature, but also salinity), but occurs within 6 to 30 hours after hatching. At 28°C (roughly 82°F) it takes about 8 hours for the newly hatched nauplii to begin feeding, and as the temperature drops, that time becomes much longer. As soon as the nauplii hatch, they begin to digest their yolk and become less nutritious with time after hatching, however, once they reach the second instar, they can begin to feed, and you can enhance their nutritional value by feeding them a highly unsaturated fatty acid (HUFA) supplement that provides high concentrations of essential fatty acids for the health of most marine animals (reviewed by Coutteau and Mourente 1997; Rainuzzo et al. 1997; Sorgeloos et al. 2001).

Many people seem to have the idea that you're trying to soak the nauplii in the stuff to coat them before feeding. While that may be true of frozen foods, it is not particularly effective, and most of the enrichment solution ends up floating freely in your aquarium as dissolved nutrients (just as if you had dumped it into the tank directly) rather than getting into your fish. In this case, what you're really trying to accomplish is to get the baby brine shrimp to eat the stuff, so that they are basically swimming grocery bags full of those nutrients when you feed them to your reef tank. The problem is that baby brine shrimp are very inefficient feeders, and it takes a long time for them to ingest enough of the HUFA supplement that they become "enriched" (e.g., Evjemo et al. 1997; Han et al. 2000; Han et al. 2001). For newly hatched brine at the second instar, it takes at least 12 hours to get decent enrichment - in fact, its much better to enrich your Artemia nauplii for two 12 hour periods (with a water change between them to limit the growth of bacteria in the culture water). To clean the nauplii, simply pour the culture through a "brine shrimp net" (one of the fine, white mesh nets available at any pet shop) and rinse them a couple of times before setting them up in clean water and adding new HUFA. After the two 12-hour feedings of the HUFA supplement, the nutritional value of the nauplii is typically much greater than when they are newly hatched (reviewed by Coutteau and Mourente 1997; Rainuzzo et al. 1997; Sorgeloos et al. 2001).

The same is true of adult brine: they are largely devoid of nutritional value when you purchase them at the local petshop, and it is important to enrich them before feeding brine shrimp to your fish. For live adult brine shrimp, it is relatively simple to enrich them with a HUFA supplement (such as Selcon or Zoecon), and that greatly enhances the nutritional value of these animals as a food for your aquarium pets. Brine shrimp become more efficient feeders as they grow, and as a result, larger Artemia can be enriched in shorter times due to that increased efficiency of filter-feeding. In fact, although live Artemia can benefit from periods of enrichment equivalent to those of the nauplii, adults can be significantly enriched in as little as about 1-2 hours of feeding in a HUFA supplement. Be enriching live brine prior to them being introduced to your reef aquarium, you not only provide a popular treat to your animals, but also gain the maximum nutritional benefit from feeding these foods to your pets.

Here's a link to read that article: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/jan2004/invert.htm

 

[SMinNC]

It's possiblr to keep them alive and raise them to adults that have eggs, and make more babies.

I done it quite a few yrs ago.

Here's how my experience went.

5 gal tank. (dem's somewhere around 12"x8"x10"H)

I had a brine shrimp "hatchery" thingy.
Thought I'd try to find it instead of describe it.
Here it is...
http://www.bigalsonline.com/StoreCatalog/ctl3684/cp18326/si1381031/cl1/san_francisco_bay_shrimpery?&path=c3684-def-USD-16695%23%23-1%23%23-1%7E%7Eq6272696e6520736872696d70%7E%7Ec3684-def-USD-18322%23%236%23%23l%7E%7Enc3684-def-USD-18326%23%230%23%23c&query=brine+shrimp&offset=

In the 5 gal. I had a small heater. (25w?)
Ran just an Air line into it, to the bottom for circulation.
No Air Stone. Just the open end of the tubing.
I heard the Small bubbles could be bad news for the shrimps. The bubbles sticking to them seem'd to be the fear/problem.
And some Instant Ocean(sea salt for salt water aquariums)
I figured this would/could have all the neat stuff in it to sustain life.
Not sure on the SG, but I'm sure it was around 1.00. Yip, used a Hydrometer.
But this was around 18 trs ago, and I didn't keep notes. ; )

In the Shrimpery

Just followed direction's.

When I saw some shrimp in the clear container. I'd dump them in the 5 gal. I'm pretty sure this went on for a few days.

Back to the tank.

After the first babies had been in the tank for around 24 hrs. I added Bakers Yeast.
Sorry if this isn't the exact product. I don't do much for baking. And was the only time I've ever used it. : / But I'm 90% sure thats what it was.

Also, I'm not sure of the quantity. But was enough to cloud the water pretty good, to a brownish/yellow. Pretty much the color you'd expect from doing this. : )

After somewhere around another 24 hrs. And still adding new shrimps. The water was clear, or close to it. So I'd add some more yeast.

If I remember right. This went on for atleast 3 weeks.

Adult shrimp were seen carrying eggs. And more babies were continuosly comming around.

I'm pretty sure the ammonia lvls got ridiculas somewhere along the line. And not much for anywhere for bacteria to grow besides the glass walls. The inevitable was going to happen. But like any tank I've ever had going. It's a continuos experiment. And sense everywhere I read. It was always the Lack of Nutrition. So I didn't put a while lot into it. But got the "Wow, check this out!" thing for a few weeks.

Anyway...

They can be kept alive and make more of themselves.

If I done it again, I'd use the Silcon stuff mentioned in the article above.

And sense I'm pretty sure I have stuff around here to do it with. With the exception of the 5 gal tank. You might here about it again, from me. : )

There's my 3 cents. : )

 

[kj5kb]

FWIW, I can get adult brine shrimp at my LFS...and they are on the shelf in a bag.
So, I suspect they might do OK shipped. I'd want to have them a bucket with an aerator while shipping, if I had a choice.