Decapsulating Brine Shrimp Eggs

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wuvmybetta

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Decapsulating Brine eggs is not a necessary step, but it is useful. Undecapsulated eggs can lead to swim bladder problems in young fry. When you decapsulate you will wind up with a higher hatch rate and you'll find the eggs hatch quicker.

First..fill a large jar 2/3 of the way with clean, cool water. Allow yourself enough space to add bleach later. You'll want 2/3 water to 1/3 bleach.

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Add your brine eggs, you can do as much or as little as you'd like at a time. I prefer to do a few tablespoons full at a time, to avoid this step for a few weeks. Let the eggs soak for a few minutes.
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Now turn on the aerator, this will tumble and rejuvenate the Artemia eggs. Let them tumble like this for a couple of hours, occasionally give it a swirl to get the eggs that are lying on the bottom.
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Now,gently pour in the bleach.
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Quickly the eggs will turn colors, from white to tan to orange..
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In the meantime get a bowl and add 1 cup of cool water and 1 tablespoon of Vinegar. You will need this to neutralize the bleach in a minute.

When they are orange,pull the air and strain the eggs through a baby brine shrimp net. You may want to test your net ahead of time because I have gone through all of these steps only to have 80% of my eggs go down the sink.
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Strain the eggs, rinse them and then dip the net in your vinegar solution, then rinse again until all of the bleach/vinegar smell is gone. Now they're ready to go.
To store them in the fridge you just need to put a heavy salt solution in a jar and keep them there. They will stay in a suspended animation for months.
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Can eggs decapsulated in this manner be fed direstly to the fry, or is this strictly for pre-hatching?

What happens to the egg shells? Do they just dissolve away?
 
Yes, you can feed them directly to the fry this way if you like :nod:
And the shell's disintegrate into a clear, membrane-type, thin shell.
 
For some bizarre reason it was a lot cheaper for me to buy decapslated eggs than capsulated ones.... Which I thought was odd.
 
i know that no one has posted on this in like forever... well i got a ?...

i know that it helps the fry, and that you get more bbs... but what exactly does it do to the eggs?
 
It removes the shell, a part that is useless and many times harmful to fry.
 

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