Brine Shrimp

[Miss Wiggle]

as you might have seen from my other post (link in my sig if your interested) we're battling high nitrates in our marine tank. Obviously adding more waste to it is the last thing we wanna do, so we've been very careful with feeding so we don't end up with waste creating more problems. Ian had the idea the other day that we set up a brine shrimp hatchery as if we fed them live brine shrimp they wouldn't die, would just swim around until the clowns got hungry and ate them, so they'd be no excess food creating more waste. However it happens I was watching the blue planet re-runs last night and it said that brine shrimp were one of the few things to survive in very high salinity water..... so do they actually need the higher salinity, or would they survive in normal marine tank parameters (think we're sitting about 1.022 at the moment), how logn would they live for (assuming they don't get eaten). Any other thoughts on weather this is a good diea or not?

 

[SkiFletch]

Somethin tells me you'd be surprised at the appetite of your clownfish they can mow down some serious food. Live brine shrimp wouldnt be a bad idea as a food source (in fact its quite a good idea) but your clowns would surely eat them up within a day or two. I made a mistake once early on in keeping my clowns and dropped a whole cube of frozen brine into my tank... Clowns had it all gone in 5 mins tops.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

oh yeah we weren't just gonna put one lot in and hope they'd last! were just thinking if we gave them some maybe every other day and then something like flake once or twice a week, it'd seriously cut down on any uneaten food being left in the tank.... unless the brine shrimp were gonna die in which case it'd just be adding to the problem.

 

[SkiFletch]

Oh, nah, live brine is a good food source. Pretty clean too especially compared to frozen. Now that you guys have some cleanup crew I wouldnt worry too much about uneaten food... A properly selected crew will take care of that

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Oh, nah, live brine is a good food source. Pretty clean too especially compared to frozen. Now that you guys have some cleanup crew I wouldnt worry too much about uneaten food... A properly selected crew will take care of that

yeah we've only a skeleton crew at the moment though. just waiting for the nitrates to drop before we go putting more livestock in there. But then again they've only the bio load of 2 clowns to take care of.

 

[Jeff20147]

Oh, nah, live brine is a good food source. Pretty clean too especially compared to frozen. Now that you guys have some cleanup crew I wouldnt worry too much about uneaten food... A properly selected crew will take care of that

yeah we've only a skeleton crew at the moment though. just waiting for the nitrates to drop before we go putting more livestock in there. But then again they've only the bio load of 2 clowns to take care of.

What's your current setup? Lbs. of live rock how many powerheads, got a sump?

We are battling the same thing in a 150 we can't get it to go below 20 anymore, the store said that the dead spots behind out live rock are to blame. The corals don't seem to mind I just keep a eye on it and keep it at 20 with weekly water changes.

 

[Navarre]

Im sorry to say that live brine shrimp has almost zero nutritional value
Brine shrimp sadly only offer a good source of food when they are newly hatched and thus have their egg sacks still atached. Other than this its not a food i would give as a sole (or even primary) source of food. Its a shame as fish love them! Its useful to get shy feeders etc to begin feeding but sadly this is adout all i would give it credit for. I have known fish to starve and weaken by being fedon brine shrimp alone.

I would sugest you use mysis shrimp as an alternative.

 

[AMS]

Im sorry to say that live brine shrimp has almost zero nutritional value
Brine shrimp sadly only offer a good source of food when they are newly hatched and thus have their egg sacks still atached. Other than this its not a food i would give as a sole (or even primary) source of food. Its a shame as fish love them! Its useful to get shy feeders etc to begin feeding but sadly this is adout all i would give it credit for. I have known fish to starve and weaken by being fedon brine shrimp alone.

I would sugest you use mysis shrimp as an alternative.

I totally agree. Brine shrimp are a barren wasteland of nutrients. Even BBS are nutritionally poor. The eggs sacks only remain intact for 4 hours, on this the BBS feed because they have not developed their digestive tract. The only time BS become nutritious is when you take BBS between 4-16 hours old and enrich with HUFA rich products such as Selco for 12 hours, even then they aren't all that good. Many of seahorse have died eating a diet of only live brine, it's like humans eating a diet consiting of only bread.

 

[Tommy Gunnz]

I am not the expert here, but wanted to jump in on the subject because I think you can still control the amount of food that you are feeding, no matter what it is, to avoid adding to the ammonia and what not.

I feed all sorts of frozen foods to my fish, including krill, silversides, brine shrimp, mysis shrimp and blood worms. Rather than just plop a frozen cube in my tank, I thaw them out in a cup dedicated to just the fish (usually it is one of those containers that potato salad comes in from the grocery store). When it is thawed out, I can 'dose' out food much better and even feed it slowly enough to make sure than only a little or none of it hits the substrate. You may also think about feeding only once a day or once every other day. Clownfish especially will learn the 'pattern' and know when to get ready to eat.

I use this method with my cichlid tank because they usually eat about two and a half cubes of frozen food every other day. I just put the container with the other half of the brine shrimp or whatever into the freezer until the next feeding when I just add two cubes instead of three. I had a big problem at one time with my cichlids not eating fast enough to catch it all before it hit the ground and was lost. So, I just use a plastic spoon to feed it more slowly. It is kind of cool to watch the feeding frenzy.

As far as breeding the brine shrimp, it would most likely be easy enough for you to do. My lfs sells live brine shrimp, but it does get expensive and they usually cannot handle all of the water flow in my tank, so they die as they crash into the LR and glass. If you still want to go witth that idea though, I would get myself a cheap heater and a 10 gallon tank to raise them in. Those little black hatcheries can only sustain them for a short time, too short for them to get big enough to even matter to a fish. They will do much better if you keep the temp really high (around 90 degrees F, I believe) and you can use the waste water from your water changes to fill the tank. This way they will be acclimated immidietly to your tank's salinity.

 

[Mr.September15]

So since Brine shrimp isnt such a good food source...What would you recommend?
I currently am feeding my clowns brine shrimp and marine flakes.

 

[SkiFletch]

Variety is the spice of life. maybe add some mysis, pellet, or krill to their diet for supplimentation

 

[Mr.September15]

Pellets? Like the hakari betta pellets? lol, or is there a certain type?

 

[SkiFletch]

Like hikari marine s pellets . pretty sure betta pellets arent a tasty formula for saltwater fish.

 

[sukie]

When I had my hatchery going for my baby betta fries. . I would shoot some bbs into my nano and my clown loved it!!!

As far as gettting nitrates down. . . I would use different methods like a ton of water changes. . maybe like 10% every three days or run some carbon.

 

[Lynden]

Granular Ferric Oxide (GFO) is very effective at removal of nitrates and phosphates.

Worked for me, anyway

-Lynden