Harvesting Brine Shrimp Worth It?

[Kombat]

I was thinking about starting to harvest some brine shrimp eggs a couple times a month or once a week for my fish. Cost-wise, is it worth it. I see on aquabid I can get 4oz of eggs for $12. I've read that the babies are only good for feeding for 24 hours so I worry about waste if I have 200,000 shrimp with only a half dozen fish to feed. I have no idea how many one fish would eat. I assume the shrimp would live for a few hours in the aquarium. Would the fish "snack" on shrimp throughout the day if they didn't consume them all initially? I assume I can control how many eggs I put into the hatchery. Based on my setup shown in my signature, is this something that is worth the bother? Maybe something that would be fun to try? Kids can learn about the circle of life? Or am I better off going with frozen foods?

Thanks,
Karl

 

[Dragonscales]

Depends really.

Baby brine shrimp do hold some nutritional value where as adults are practically inert of nutrients. If you are going to just feed the babies to your fish then you won't have a problem. With the adults on the other hand, you can enrich them before feeding to boost the level of nutrients reaching your fish.

On a whole though, I'd prefer to just buy frozen mysis shimp, enrich that and let the brine shrimp go to buggery. Too much effort for not enough gain IMO. There is no harm in buying the occasional bag of brine shimp from the LFS to toss into the mix every so often though, this is what I do.

 

[Tempestuousfury]

You say enrich the food. How does one do that?