Live Brine Shrimp

[sawickib]

Thinking about breeding some brine shrimp for food for my elephant nose fish. Anyone know how much money it would cost and how to do it?

 

[Baccus]

They shouldn't cost that much to purchase the eggs, and the original hatching of them is easy provided the water temp is right and the salinity, I tend to run into problems when I try to grow the brine shrimp.
 
There are plenty of "how too" type posts on the internet that show how to make cheap hatching containers out of plastic bottles and the like, you will almost certainly also require at least an airstone in the water as well at least until the eggs hatch. When making your saline water for the brine shrimp be sure to use marine or sea salt not table salt with iodine. The next problem will be feeding the shrimp, most brine shrimp hatching kits that you can buy for kids only really has food suitable for young brine shrimp. So it might pay to also get some green water cultures happening prior to hatching the brine shrimp so you can use that for feeding them. Or you could try using the powdered foods designed for feeding corals for the brine shrimp, or even foods such as liquid fry or first bites.
 
Since you are wanting them as a food source for fresh water fish, could you perhaps get some fairy shrimp? These are like brine shrimp but found in fresh water. That way you wont have to worry about rinsing the saline water off the brine shrimp prior to adding them to your fish tank as food, and they wont die relatively quickly and potentially foul your water.

 

[sawickib]

Thanks alot I loke into the care of fairy shrimp!

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I am familiar with brine but not fairy. There are considerations regarding brine that most fish keepers don't know. What it boils down to is this.
 
Baby brine lose all the nutritional value in about 8 hours after hatching. AT that point you would need to feed specific food to enrich them before feeding them. The problem is this will make them grow and that may make them too big for very small mouths.
 
Adult brine need power feeding even more for them to have decent nutritional value. this is especially true when they are used for sw fish.
 
You can get a much more in depth explanation in this article. I have exchanged emails with Dr. Toonen on this subject and he brought me up to speed on brine. While his focus in the article below was on marine applications most of the considerations apply to fw fish as well. The main difference is sw fish need some specific things that are less critical for fw fish.
http/www.advancedaquarist.com/2004/1/inverts

 

[sawickib]

I am familiar with brine but not fairy. There are considerations regarding brine that most fish keepers don't know. What it boils down to is this.
 
Baby brine lose all the nutritional value in about 8 hours after hatching. AT that point you would need to feed specific food to enrich them before feeding them. The problem is this will make them grow and that may make them too big for very small mouths.
 
Adult brine need power feeding even more for them to have decent nutritional value. this is especially true when they are used for sw fish.
 
You can get a much more in depth explanation in this article. I have exchanged emails with Dr. Toonen on this subject and he brought me up to speed on brine. While his focus in the article below was on marine applications most of the considerations apply to fw fish as well. The main difference is sw fish need some specific things that are less critical for fw fish.
http/www.advancedaquarist.com/2004/1/inverts

Thanks amin I looked into that and wont be using them, should i even bother to give them frozen brine or no? Should i just feed them frozen and freeze dried bloodwoorms?