Hatching brine shrimp

Hi all

I've set up my brine shrimp hatchery, now waiting for them to hatch.

Question: When they hatch, do I add any stuffies for them to eat or does one feed them all to the fish?

If one were to raise brine shrimp a bit, what do you feed and how much?

What other caring issues are there?

Thanks!

 

PappaBear, your paternal instincts are too strong man. They are food! Nothing more, nothing less.

Show us your hatchery. I am having problems lately. Wonder if it is the cold of winter?

 

And remember, they are the most nutritious when just hatched. The selfish bastards use their nutrition for them self to grow! How inconsiderate!

 

You are getting me all wrong @TomK. I just want te keep them alive and fed so that if I don't use all of the hatched shrimp at once, the rest can be used later, not just thrown away....

I thus don't have super parental instincts.... I'm a cheapskate!

 

haha, armgat like me! There is a million threads on this subject and they all come back to one thing. Feed them all as soon as possible. If it is too much, use less eggs, smaller hatchery, etc. @Vis showed us a nice small hatchery, where they come to the light. Maybe he can give us some feedback on how effective it turned out to be?

So, small but frequent hatches is the answer to us 'arm gatte'!

 

I'll post pics tomorrow.... I use nescafe coffee bottles in my guppy tank......

 

Sound interesting. Can not wait!

 

@PappaBear, have a look at this site. I wanted to hatch them myslef. http://exotic-aquariums.com/Brine_Shrimp.html

 

If you want a hatchery look no further than a 2L juice bottle and a 300 ml juice bottle. The lid from the 300 ml can be exchanged with the 2L. This is useful to decant them. Then all you need is aquarium salt, water, eggs and an airline. I set one up last week and it cost me very little - all I had to buy was an airpump.

 

I have read that you can freeze them easily. The author used the plastic remains of gum packs, if you scrape all of the aluminum off it looks like a minute ice holder, just pour brine shrimp and water in and freeze. You do not need to thaw before usage, just let the icicle bob for a while.

Obviously the nutritional value will decrease in the freezer, but we freeze our meat... If you can afford to rather hatch new shrimp each time, rather go for that

 

Temperature plays a role in hatching BS so does light, so using a night light and a heater in your hatching will increase hatching rate and time. Also feeding is not necesary, you can keep them allive for over 2 weeks as long as you keep the air pump with thae airstone going. Feeding BS @ birth is off course the best as they carry their egg sack, and that is the nutritious part.

 

Hi Guys,

I am going to have to step in here a little because I see all sorts of things going wrong here. There are numerous threads about bs hatching on this forum but let me clarify a few issues.

When bs hatch they have a very high nutritional value and are full of proteins which are not present in other foods, that is why they are fed to baby fishes in the first place. However, within hours after hatching they start growing and they shed their exoskeleton. This costs them energy and so in terms of feeding value, their value drops. So the objective is to feed them as soon as possible after hatching and NOT to try to raise them, because they actually LOOSE in nutritional value and even if you feed them as well as you can you will not replace the nutritional value of the freshly hatched ones. So hatch them and use them asap.

Then freezing them, causes their very sensitive exoskeleton to break and their contents leak out and is lost. Also, a major part of the value of freshly hatch bs is that they are live, their movement causes fry to want to eat them, if they are frozen and dead, the baby fishes are not interested in them, so freezing does NOT work. When you buy frozen bs, they are frozen adult bs which are about 5-8 mm long and are not suitable for feeding small fishes, but because the shrimps are adult they have a hard exoskeleton and high quality frozen bs does not leak into the water. However, if they are even slightly unfrozen as happens when they are repacked into blister packs, they start leaking so blisterpack frozen bs are not so good, the chocolate bar or slab type is what you should use.

If you want to see a nice bs hatching setup have a look at Aquazulu's setup in his discus thread.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Also just something extra, there is new born BBS available that is unfrozen, its in like some kind of liquid, as the prof mentioned, live BBS is the best, but the ones you buy in the liquid helped me save my fry when I battled to hatch my BS, @ first they didnt go for it as fry goes after movement, but after about the second day they realised that its rather jummy, and from there it was a life saver. So if you have fry and you battle to hatch your BS its a good alternative, I also had good growth on it just like normal live BS.

 

Thanks for the help thus far guys! I came home yesterday to find that the eggs have hatch within 18 hours! I am utterly amazed!!!

I'm a bit baffled about getting the buggers out to feed..... seems to me that if you syphon them out and then use a siringe (oh my hat I don't know how to spell inspuiting in english!!), to squirt the hatched brine shrimp at the babies, i'll be squirting them with salt water as well?

any tips?

I'm also strugging to remove the egg shells without dunking them below between the hatched shrimp again......

 

Yes...a bit of salt water will not hurt, but its simple, take a piece of clean cloth, put it over a small jar, use air tubing with a straw attached to it, and suck some out on to the cloth over the jar, water will go straight thru and BS will stay on the cloth, then dip cloth in2 tank. No salt water this way, many other ways as well, but ive been doing it this way for about 10 years, and it works well 4 me.

 

o and another tip, if you want the BS to come to 1 point, use a small flash light and put it @ the bottom shining in2 the jar of BS, they are atracted to the light, and they will all gather @ the point of the light. I use my Black Berry torch works like a bomb....

 

Good morning PappaBear.

 

If you dip the cloth into the water, how do you control where the bs go? i've got a 50cm deep tank, and the apisto fry generally keep to the bottom..... thinking i'll have to squirt the bs next to them? please advise.....

 

@TomK: Sorry man!! I was in a rush to go to a badminton match after work and the game only finished 23:00!!! So didn't take any pics.... they hatched after 18hours though, so my setup works!

I'm going to ceres for the weekend, so again will post sunday/monday soonest.... sorry....

 

Well BS normaly swim around, so the fry will find them, otherwise close the cloth and open it up close to the fry. U can also dip the cloth in tank water in a glass or jar then use the inspuiting to squirt them closer to the fry.