live brine

lwooters

lwooters

AC Members
Jan 5, 2007
225
0
0
Maryland, USA
Has anyone here had any experience with raising live brine for their fish? I'm kinda interested in doing this, but I wanted to hear someone say if it's easy, not worth it... Will the brine reproduce so you've got a constant supply or are you constantly buying eggs? Do you buy these online or does your LFS sell these? Thanks for your imput.
 
The LFS near our house sells live brine shrimp so cheaply that I don't mess with buying / hatching eggs. $1 worth of brine shrimp lasts me an entire week. I feed them and keep them alive in a small fish bowl with an airstone, feeding only a portion of them to our tank at a time.
 
i hatch it and then jsut reed it. raising it honestly isnt worth it. you will have a lot of deaths, it takes a few weeks for them to mature, and you will have to constantly feed them for them to be any nutritional value. and with all the food, it would probably be cheaper to buy eggs than food. those little viles hold quite a LOT of egg for only 2-3 bucks.
also, unless the store is hatching the baby brine, i wouldnt bother with any store stuff. a lot of places order the adult brine, and by that time it is malnurished and pretty much useless. the baby brine still have some of the yold so they are highly nutritious.
 
Thanks for the help, so just one of those 2 liter bottle bubble thingies will do the trick? I guess a bowl with an airstone would probably do it, I was just thinking the bottle would be a little harder for my cats to.... uh... disturb.
 
that is also why i use the bottle. ive done it in a bowl also, but since it doesnt have the cone shape, only a small portion of the bowl gets any flow. (i did use a rather large bowl though)
 
make sure u enrich them with zoa marine or silcon or a similar product otherwise they are just some raggidy meat. i used to use a intank breeder with built in pump and all that to feed baby brine but i fouled the water pretty bad. its up to u really just give it a try and if the shrimp look nice and fat with a redish color then u achieved ur goal and made some decient food.
 
Hatching brine shrimp is easy, raising them is not if you are doing it in any appreciable stocking densities.
They should be rinsed in fresh water before placing them in the tank as the cysts can harbor nasty bacteria that sometimes can wipe out a tank.
(Brine Shrimp Direct warns of rinsing them - see their site)
I would never let hatching water come in contact with my tanks because of this.
Depending on what you are feeding, decapping the cysts and putting them in the tank without hatching can be the most nutritious way to feed the tank.
If you are hatching them out, they should be used immediately upon hatchout as the nauplii then start consuming the egg sack thereby decreasing the nutrient value.
For the most complete information available on brine shrimp (artemia) see the United Nations site on Live Foods for Aquaculure where there is an Artemia section prepared by the Artemia Reference Centre at the University of Ghent.
CLICK HERE AND SCROLL DOWN TO SECTION 4.0
There is also an excellent section on brine shrimp nutrition.

For those willing to do the work to raise brine shrimp to adult in meaningful numbers go to my brine page.
RASING BRINE SHRIMP TO ADULT

For those wishing to buy live adult brine shrimp but find they aren't available in their area:
LIVE BRINE SHRIMP
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom