Although this may be obvious to many experienced aquarists, many new aquarists have asked me, so I am going to post details on how to build your own DIY hatchery setup.

Here's what you would need:

- 2L coke bottle (7up botttle works just as well... )
- Some airline tubing
- Air pump
- Air valve
- Some stones
- Desktop lamp
- Brine shrimp eggs (you can get this from eBay or aquabid.com)
- Baking soda
- Aquarium salt
- Coffee filter
- Plastic cup
- Syringe (without needles!)

Steps to build:
-----------------

1. Remove the advertising material off the bottle so that it is completely clear. Wash them thoroughly.
2. Cut off the bottle at around 1/3 way from the top. Make sure you keep the cap!
3. Punch a hole through the cap using philips screw driver. The size should be slightly narrower than the thickness of the tube.
4. Insert the tube into the cap - make sure the tube shows about 1/4 inch from the inside of the cap. Screw the cap into the bottle.
5. Connect the other end of the tube to a valve, then continue to the air pump. You must be able to adjust the amount of air fed into this setup!
6. Put the stones into the bottom part of the bottle. This is to make sure that the whole bottle doesn't get tipped over easily.
7. Insert the top 1/3 with the tubing upside down.

That's it for the setup! Nice and cheap...

How to use it:
----------------

1. Add some water into the top 1/3, until it fills up up to about 1 inch below the top line.
2. Turn on the air pump and control the valve until you get about 5 bubbles per second. It does not need to be vigorous.
3. Add 1/3 - 1/2 teaspoon full of baking soda and aquarium salt. Brine shrimps can only be hatched in a salty water, so you must do this.
4. Add about 1/3 to 1/2 teaspoon full of brine shrimp eggs. 1/3 seems to be enough for 2 days worth. If you have more than 2 tanks of fries to feed, I suggest at least 1/2 if not more.
5. Leave them on for 1 to 2 days. If your room temp is 70F or better, it usually starts to hatch in 24 hours. Hotter means faster hatch, cooler means slower hatch. Once hatched, you can leave it for two days and during these two days, you can extract them as often as you like.

How to extract:
-----------------

1. Stop the air pump. Note that you will see bright orange specks moving randomly and quickly. You can't mistake this for anything else...
2. Face the table lamp near where the cap is. Baby brine shrimps get attracted to lights, so if you place the light near the bottom, they will all move towards the bottom. This step can take few minutes.
3. Place a coffee filter on top of a cup or another bottom portion of 2L bottle. Make sure the center is slightly sunk to accomodate some water without spiling over.
4. Insert the syringe into the water, near the bottom and extract shrimps into it. This needs a bit of practice as if you do it too quickly, you will suck in quite a lot of egg shells as well. Egg shells do float, so it isn't impossible to separate them later on.
5. Pour shrimps (and water) on top of the filter. Wait until all water have been filtered off.
6. Now you have a choice - you can either "wash" this filter directly into the tank where you want to feed the shrimps, or you can reverse the filter, place it on another cup, and shoot water using the syringe so that most of the shrimps will drop into the new cup.

There! Baby brine shrimps are one of the best food you can provide for pretty much all fries. In fact, most adult fishes also thrive on this food as well. Once setup, it will be one of the cheapest source of food as well if you buy a decent size can. I've been feeding my fries for the past year, and I've only used up 1/3 of the can I purchased while back. The can only costed me $15 or so.

Good luck, and if you have any further questions, welcome to post them here!

(I will post some pictures on the following messages of this thread)

Left bottle is the hatchery. Right bottle is used to filter shrimps.

I believe the term fo this would be "hatching".

This post has been edited by tempestuousfury: Sep 21 2004, 11:43 PM

As you can see, the egg shells will either float, or stick on the sides of the bottle. If you use the syringe carefully, you will be able to extract shrimps without disturbing the shells!

I believe there's already a pinned article on this, but I might be wrong.

I hope you don't mind, but I also have "researched" ways to hatch shrimp.

Hatching brine shrimp:
“It takes only about 1 quart of salt water (specific gravity of 1.017) to hatch out 1/3 ounce of brine shrimp cysts. Many people use inverted soda bottles with the bottoms cut off. Airline tubing is then piped into the cap of the bottle to provide circulation. A temperature of around 86°F (30°C) works well for hatching them out. It will take about 24 hours for the hatching to start, and it will continue over the following day. At lower temperatures, hatching time is increased and the total percent of cysts that hatch will decrease. Since the newly hatched nauplii are attracted to light, a flashlight is used to concentrate them and separate them from the cyst shells and unhatched cysts.
“The shells can be removed prior to placing them in the brine solution by soaking ¾ ounce (21 g) of shrimp cysts in 2 cups (500 ml) of water for an hour. Then add 1½ cups (350 ml) of liquid bleach. It is recommended that the resulting solution be chilled in an ice bath as it will get rather hot and kill the cysts. It is also recommended that the solution be stirred continuously to keep the cysts suspended until they turn from brown to orange. This could take as long as 10 minutes. The cysts are drained into a brine shrimp net and rinsed numerous times with tap water. These cysts are now ready for hatching without the concern of separating the resulting nauplii from the shells. In my opinion [the original author’s and mine, though I haven’t tried it myself] the deshelling of the cysts is a good idea as there have been reports of fry with intestinal blockages caused by ingestion of brine shrimp cysts. A drawback to the feeding of brine shrimp to fish is that, if used for freshwater fish, the shrimp die rapidly once placed in fresh water. When brine shrimp are unfed, they rapidly lose their nutritional value and should be fed soon after hatching.”

Fairfield, Terry. A Commonsense Guide to Fish Health. New York: Barron’s, 2000.

This post has been edited by tempestuousfury: Sep 22 2004, 04:40 AM

If you've done your job with syringe, you shouldn't see much egg shells as seem below...

Again, this is how I hatch BBS. This isn't identical to what other articles suggest but it works for me. One of the biggest difference is that they often suggest to keep it at 25 or 30C - I found out that this isn't necessary! It was rather difficult for me to keep it at those higher-than-room-temperature level without keeping the table lamp on all the time, so I'm happy to say that they hatch at 20C just as easily, but it will take more time.

Good luck everyone!

tempestuousfury, I didn't realize you posted while I was busy cutting and pasting picture URLs into my posts...

I don't mind at all - please add more information that will complete this topic.

Interesting fact about remiving the skin, though...

another useful tip...

Dont use table salt

Deiodized table salt should work though.... at least that's what one of my texts stated. That's not necessarily right, though.

LOL I just saw the title I gave to this thread - of course, I meant to say "hatch" not breed...

Now I understand tempestuousfury's message...

many thanks for this information guys I'm gonna pick up some big bottles of coke on the way home now!



Cava

Hi yhbae

Thanks for starting such a helpful thread. I'll pin it so it won't get lost.

I just put some in a two liter bottle set up. I think that my one and a half to two dozen sword tail fry will enjoy the food. Thanx for posting this it was very helpful.

I dont know if anyone else has heard of this or not. I bought a continuous brine shrimp feeder on ebay last week and i think it is great. I got mine for 15 dollars. It sits inside your tank (even freshwater). The eggs hatch in 12 to 18 hours and slowly swim out into the tank while the egg shells remain in the hatcher. The instructions say the salt water wont get into the tank. I doubt this is possible but i use salt in my freshwater tank anyway so i figure a little more wont hurt.
I had this in my molly rearing tank a couple days and i had one fry floating in front of the outlet eating the brine as soon as they came out. he also chased away the other fry and wouldnt share. Now i am trying it in the main tank hoping they will find thier way to my danio fry.

table salt works for me!
the salt for freshwater tanks dose not though

I use the same set up 2 liter bottle.

1 quart water
1 tablespoon rock salt
1 teaspoon epson salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

temp 82-86F with light source

I also decap my shrimp eggs as I find it too hard to seperate them completely from the shrimp.

decapping is easy to do.

take a 1 pint jar fill it have way with fresh water and dechlorinate.
then add aireation and 1/2 teaspoon BS eggs to the jar for 1 hour or so.
next take pure unscented bleach and fill the jar 1/2 inch from the top.
keep aireation going and stir with air tube.
after 5 minutes the eggs will have turned orange and start sinking.
pour the eggs through a brine shrimp net and rinse well with running water.
fill the jar with clean water put shrimp back into jar add arieation.
add dechlorinator to the jar while stirring.
pour the eggs into a brine shrimp net.
the eggs should now be ready to put in the hatcher.

I have my water already made up to hatch and just add the eggs.

If anyone has a fool proof way to stop getting egg shells or un hatched eggs in with the shrimp please let me know!!!

I've hatched them with less than that