Hatching and growing brine shrimp

Hi All

so i got my shrimp eggs to hatch and my guppie frie and other fish love it, but about 4 days later it looks like they are dying in my upside down DIY coke bottle hatchery..
my question is how do i keep the shrimp alive and how do i get them to the size they get to when you buy them from LFS?

thanx

 

What I used to do is to keep the hatched brine shrimps in refrigerator in order to slow their growth and metabolism.

 

would it be better to keep them small? i read they are more nutritious as babies but it quiet awesome when the fish feed on the bigger ones..

 

When hatching and feeding Brine shrimp, the baby shrimp lose a lot of their nutritional value after the first 36 hours. It is best to feed them when freshly hatched. What I do is make 2 hatcheries. One on day one and one on day 2. Then you harvest the ones from day one, then remake the solution with fresh eggs. Then the next day you harvest the ones you made on the second day and remake the solution. This way you will have a constant supply of the best nutritional value brine shrimps.

It is pointless keeping them alive longer because they use up so much of their nutritional value too quickly.

 

awesome thank you, so there is no point in making them bigger. i use about half a litre water with 4 tea spoons salt.. is that a good enough mixture or should i increase my salt? i then suck out a 5mil sirynge full from the bottle and squirt it in my tank. is that fine? or do you have to remove from salt water first?
thank you for your input

 

Hi can any body help me?I want to hatch some brine shrimp eggs but do not know how to set it up.My jewels layed there first eggs yesterday and I want to be ready when they hatch.Any advise will be helpfull.Thanks.

 

u need eggs obviously, special hatchine salt, water, a coke bottle and eomthing to hold it upside down and an airpump with some air tube. basically cut the bottom of the coke bottle open, make a whole in the lid big enough to fit the air tube, silicone that closed so it doesnt leak. connect the tube to aipump. my recipe is half litre water with 4heaped tea spoons of salt, mix that till the salt disolves, pour it in the coke bottle and turn on you airpump to get the bubbles going. don't worry if the water is bubbling agreesively. add a pinch of eggs or just take some with the tip of a tea spoon. i also put a lamp light above the coke bottle and wait about 30 hours and they should hatch. you can then get rid of the light, i keep the bubles going but turn off the pump 10 minutes before feeding so the egg shells move to the top. you can the suck out your shrimp from the bottom or use the airtube to release shrimp into container

hope this helps

 

No, you should never add the salt water to your aquarium. You will increase the salinity in your freshwater tank by doing this. So, not a good idea. You can get brine shrimp nets which have a super fine mesh that lets the water out and keeps the shrimp in. I got one from Prof Dirk a few years back, not sure if he still has any?

I have hatched Brine Shrimp in Fresh water before, but if you are using the coke bottle method, use the salt rather. I used to add 2 tablespoons of salt, so 4 teaspoons is about right.

 

My bs stays allive for 2weeks plus as long as I keep the aeration going, I also use water from my tanks. Although new born bs is best I sometimes use my bs for a week and still get good growth results, allong with my microw worms. I know @chaerles freezes his in slabs so if he runs out he uses that, takes some time for fry to get used to but it does work. Also keep your eggs in the refrigerator this will keep the moisture out the eggs.

 

thanx @Sean J i just assumed the small amounts would not affect it as it not more than 5mls of salt water per helping
i would be interested in the fresh water hatching way if you have time to explain it.
thanx

 

The fresh water hatchery is not even nearly as productive as the bottle method. I actually bought 3 rain gauges and I use that for my hatchery. The salt method yields far better results than the fresh water method.

This is a pic of my hatchery:

At 2 weeks of age, the brine shrimp have very little, if any, nutritional value. They will be mostly roughage, and very little nutrition. It really is best to feed them when they are freshly hatched.

 

i like the rain gauges idea, is the light on top not important? im actually not sure what the purpose of the light is, some say its for hatching and some for heat generation .. and i assume the gauges are connected to an airpump? or is that also not necessary?

 

I popped the light between the 2 full containers. It worked like a bomb. Yes, the air tubing you see coming out of the bottom of the gauges is connected to an air pump. It is very necessary to aerate the water when hatching.

 

Awesome thanx very much.. Will give it a try

 

Hi Thank you very much will put my hatchery together today.Got some eggs from our local aquarium shop yesterday.Fetch some seawater this morning.I am fotunate to be close to the sea.My jewel cichlids eggs seemed to hatched this morning.They all just disapeared this morning and it was two days today.According to the book on cichlids that I have the adults take the new born and hide them for a day or two untill they can swim by them selves.Is this true? thanks for thje advise.

 

@Seanj yes agree on nutritional value, but like I said its never been a real problem for me or my bettas, but I try to keep them max.for days.

 

I'm trying a new method of raising BBS to adulthood. I bought some PhytoPlankton powder. It says on the container that it's ideal for all filter feeders like Daphnia and ideal for raising BBS to adulthood. I'm on day 2. Will let you all know if it worked.

 

@ Ammar. The normal way to grow larger brine shrimp, is to empty your used hatchery bottles in a large plastic tub standing outside. There will be enough BBS left to start a decent culture, and with the daily additions, your brine level will increase, and you will have shrimp of different sizes. Just let the water turn green, as a food source for them, and feed them some brewers yeast as well. I have seen a lady in Pretoria that bred them in plastic pools. She was even collecting some cysts from the water surface!

 

(hatchine) salt? Would normal salt not work(aquarium salt)?

 

Hi Guys,

I think you need a few lessons in hatching brine shrimp eggs.

Firstly, all this business of using how ever many teaspoons of salt is far too rough. Every house has different sized teaspoons so how would you know. Well, the solution is that you go to your LFS and buy a hydrometer. It looks like a thermometer and floats in the water, and the more salt you have in the water, the higher it will float (remember the story about people floating the dead sea, that has twice as much salt as normal sea water). Well on the little part that sticks out of the water, there is a scale and in this way you can add salt up to a certain density and this should be 1.020. If you do this, your eggs will hatch like clockwork, every time, no hits and misses. The hydrometer will cost you a few bucks and you can use it forever and at the cost of bseggs this is an excellent investment, I would not be without it. So you start off with fresh water, add a teaspoon of salt, let it dissolve, measure the salinity and then add more salt until you get to a salinity of 1.020 .

Growing out bs is not practical and not cost effective. If you want adult bs, buy frozen ones the Ocean Nutrition brand is what you should go for. Use bs eggs for feeding babies and finished. Also, as quite correctly indicated they should be fed within 36 hours after hatching. They change their outer shell very rapidly a number of times after hatching and every time they make a new outer shell they use up their energy and loose nutrional value. Also forget about buying food for them it much too expensive and you still loose 95% of the hatchlings. You can however put them into your Portapool to grow them out, there they have enough space, but in summer I want to swim on my own in my Portapool without bs thanks!

Normal salt works, but add a pinch of bicarb to the salt water as well. I reuse my salt solution because after use, I check the salinity with the hydrometer and then add tap water to get the levels right again and it works just fine. If it gets smelly after a couple of uses, start a new solution.

Light is extremely important for hatching bs eggs. They must have strong light or else the hatch rate is much reduced. They need this because this is how it happens in nature and the light stimulates them to hatch in the Great Salt Lake in Utah in the USA (where the Mormons come from....). In winter, there is less light, it is too cold and the lake is too saline and the eggs don't hatch. In spring, the snow melts in the mountains, runs via the rivers into the lake dilutes the salt to the right concentration and the sun shines and Bobs your Uncle and they hatch. I always say, just watch what happens in nature and try to simulate that. My bs hatching containers stand on a windowsill where they get sunlight.

Enjoy hatching your bs.

Kind regards,

Dirk