Help needed hatching baby brine shrimp

[nuckfluckchuckbuck]

Hi everyone,

My apologies if this is in the wrong forum.... it's an emergency, I just don't know which category it would fit under

I currently have two batches of Axolotl eggs I'm trying to raise. One batch has started hatching and another batch is just freshly laid.

I've read that by far the best and most nutritious thing to use is baby Brine Shrimp. Apparently, because the baby brine shrimp are obviously alive, their movement also creates the desired "snapping" response from the babies. Their nutritional value is also far greater than, say, Daphnia, which is mostly just water.

I bought some brine shrimp eggs - they are the "Waterlife" brand as it happens - and have read and followed the instructions on the bottle. I did notice some pink dots in the water that looked like grains of sand which is apparently what I was looking for. However, it said that I should gather some with a fine-mesh net and ensure that I "wash" the baby brine shrimp before feeding it to the baby Axolotl's, because it would be very salty having come out of the hatching salt-water solution. I tried this, and the pink "sand" just disappeared through the net, despite it being the tiniest, tightest mesh-net I could find. Even my LFS said the net would be fine baby brine shrimp.

So - Bugger! No baby brine shrimp left, so I need to hatch it again!

Can anyone offer any advice here on how I should "harvest" the eggs once hatched this time? I really don't know what to do... I've had quite a few deaths already from those baby Axie's that have hatched so I'm getting very concerned. I just want some food for my babies!

Where should I start?

Thanks everyone!

 

[Discusophile]

Some advice on hatching brine shimp just from personal experience:
At room temperature you may get some start to hatch after 24 hours. Most will be hatched after a total of 48 hours. Put a light behind them and move the light around. If your eyes are as bad as mind you will need glasses to see them. They are a bit transparent and not nearly as easy to see as the eggs. They will clearly be moving around if you remove the air hose and movement is obvious when the water has settled. When you take the air hose out of the container, the majority will form into a pink pile on the bottom. Some packages I have bought didn't have a very high hatching success rate and you may have a bad batch. You should declorinate the water before adding the salt. I am not sure that the chlorine will penetrate the eggs but I always do it. All the nets I have used for brine shimp were made specificaly for brine shimp. I have never seen any other net fine enough. You could use filter paper or some coarse paper or very fine material like linen in an emergency. You can concentrate them by puting a light next to the container to get some live ones.

You could also put the concentrate into a small glass and pour out the salt water if they settle to the bottom. Use some declorinated water to rinse them a few times. It would be waste of shrimp but you could get some to the Axolotl. I have never seen Axolotl small enough to eat brine shimp. I had some two inch ones that loved earthworms. Hope that helps and good luck.