Brine Shrimp, anyone here raise them?

[rottielover]

Hi all,

I've been hatching baby brine shrimp (bbs) for years, but I've never been able to grow them to adults...

I'm wondering if anyone here has ever setup a system to hatch and raise thier own brine shimp to feed live to fish?

Only 1 LFS in my area that I know of has a tank full of live brine shimp and they are very expensive compared to buying a tube of eggs.

I'm kind of wondering if I can dump a batch of hatched bbs into my reef tank and let nature take it's course? (some get eaten, but some grow?)

[Phishnoob]

We tried this a few times with the upside 2 liter bottle setup with a little airpump. We had no luck on this and the brine shrimp are not really nutritous. Our fish all eat frozen so we are lucky.

[Speckled Grouper]

I bought a big can of eggs and can't ever succeed beyond hatching the nauplii. I killed whole batches despite feeding and aerating etc.
I am back to buying them from the LFS ($ 1.00 a portion that lasts me a week), gutloading them feeding to the tank every other day.
My fish and coral just can't seem to get enough of them.

[tabwyo]

Keep them in 1.026 sg. Airiate heavy to hatch then cut it by half in a week then again 10-14 days later. Hatch them in the standard upsidedown coke bottle hatchery then transfer the napuli to a tank of their own. Feed spirulina. Premix it in RO/DI, strain it and add it as a dose. I drip 2 drops a second for less than a minute. do not feed again until the water is clear. I process my BS water two times a week by siphoning off some from an unpopulated portion of the tank into a 5g bucket with a power filter containing carbon and phosgard. I keep a half tank volume in store for this. So when I do water swaps I am not waiting for a day to put clean back in. Once a month I do a 50% new water swap. I have raised BS up to 3/4" and have seen them with eggs.

[rayjay]

If you can buy them, don't grow them. It's a PITA with all the work required.
I can't buy except to import from the US which is cost prohibitive so I grow them.
I have a page on my web site with pictures and description of my operation.
http://www.angelfire.com/ab/rayjay/brineshrimp.html

[rottielover]

Great answers, and thanks for the links! I would buy from that one LFS that has them, but to be perfectly honest I don't trust that place. I have more faith in myself for keeping "clean" shrimp.

One question that I forgot to ask is, When you gutload the brine shrimp, what do you use?

[rayjay]

I use pure spirulina (from Jemco) as well as Selco (from Brine Shrimp Direct), to gut load the brine.
Selco is basically a condensed version of Selcon; a little goes a long way.
For adult brine, I gut load for at least an hour, but usually throughout the day while I'm at work, then rinse them and feed them to my fish when I get home.
I place a half teaspoon of brine in a two litre ice creme container with air agitation for the desired period.
Note: If you are gut loading day old or young brine, it takes them at least a day to gut load. If they're less than a day old, they don't have mouths yet to eat with so don't try to gut load them until at least a day old.

[JennM]

Here's a thread I participated in...

http://www.thereeftank.com/forums/sh...=brine+culture

I had a self-sustaining culture for 2 years. I neglected it and it thrived. Unfortunately last summer we got too much rain and my culture overflowed and diluted too much.

Details are in that thread but it's not too hard. You will not achieve the density of shrimp per ounce of water that the LFS tank does... but I used to get more than enough and I kept splitting the culture off into new buckets of old tank water and I always had lots.

HTH

Jenn

[JennM]

BTW you can't hatch/keep brine in a reef tank-- they will simply end up in the filter. Hatch in a bottle/jar with an airstone. They will only live briefly in a tank.. unless they are eaten.

Jenn