Found Brine Shrimp In A Country Ditch!...?

[fry_forever!]

Hi. Today I went to the country to see my Pepère, and as usual, I took a stroll down the dirt road. I always search for tadpoles, frogs and bugs in the ditch, but today I found something extremely unusual. I was looking into the water, when I saw these white things swimming around erractically. I dove my old used fish net into the water, and took it out to examine the creatures I caught. As I looked at them, I was shocked to see that they looked exactly like brine shrimp!

I thought brine shrimp lived in salt water, hence their name! Unless there was salt in the ditch, or someone purposely put them there, I am not sure. I have them at home now, and am examining them closely. I gave them some old sea monkey food I had, and they ate that readily.

I'm wondering if I can feed them to my fish...? It also looks like they have little antennaes, which I've never noticed before on brine shrimp.
Here, I have a couple pics of them: (Sorry about the bad quality!)
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Has anybody ever heard of this before? Because I'm completely weirded out!
Thanks!

 

[three-fingers]

You have there a type of fairy shrimp, you can buy eggs on eBay too.

Lucky you for having them near you .

There's loads of different types of fairy shrimp, ranging from the tiny brine shrimp that are harvested by the billions on huge salt lakes to big 4" predatory species. They usually live in temporary pools that dry up or freeze completely for most of the year, irrigation channels and flood plains.

You should check the ditch for Triops now or even maybe Lepidurus in autumn (if it doesn't dry up), now they look cool .

 

[TylerFerretLord]

I am extremely jealous, I'd love to find these guys.

 

[fry_forever!]

Really!? Cool to know! One of them died for some reason, (don't know why?) but I'm not trying too hard to keep them alive, because I don't really need them, now that I know where to get them. Is it possible to feed them to my fish? I have all livebearers, so I don't know if this would be ok...

 

[three-fingers]

They are fine to feed to fish, just make sure you don't decimate the local population.

 

[fry_forever!]

They are fine to feed to fish, just make sure you don't decimate the local population.

Ok, thank you very much. I have guppy fry, so the babies will greatly benefit from the baby fairy shrimp.

Don't worry about me decimating their population! I only go to the country once every few months, and I normally just catch tadpoles, so it's fine! I'm just mostly curious, so I would never reduce the population.

Thanks!