any brine shrimp tips?

[thomasn]

I did my first handspawning and I am going get brine shrimp going them before.

How many brine shrimp cultures do you keep running at one time assuming 500 healthy fry?

How do you maintain warmer water temperatures for the shrimp? Water in my aquariums are in the 60s and I would like to maintain the water in the 80s.

any other tips?

[bekko]

You will need to put a heater in the brine shrimp hatcher because they will take forever to hatch at 60F. At 80F most will hatch in 24 hours. At 70F you might want to let them run for 48 hours.

The other consideration is the age of the brine shrimp nauplii you will be feeding. They are most nutritious when they first hatch and still have yolk reserves. You get more brine shrimp biomass for your money if you let them molt to the second or third instar. There are plenty of products to feed and gut load older BS nauplii to make them more nutritious. For example, Selcon, Selco or one of the algae pastes. But, that adds another step to a process that may already be too tedious.

There is about 200,000 to 275,000 cysts per gram. Keep the hatching density at or below one gram per liter. The lower the better. Aerate heavily. The hatch rate will range from 50 to 85% depending on the quality of the cysts. Fairly high quality cysts are worth the price because you get much cleaner separation at harvest.

Different sources and batches of cysts hatch best under different salinities. When in doubt, use 30 to 35 grams per liter. Then experiment around to find the best salt concentration for your cysts. About five grams of salt per heaping teaspoon.

-steve

[Cincy Ranchu]

My fish room is about 70F most of the year. I have found I can run a hatch for 2 days and get naplii for two days of feeding by filling the hatcher with warm tap water and then letting it come back to the room temperature. I then can harvesy day 1 and day1 ( 24 and 48 hours).

On the odd day when I am abscent or the hatches are not quite ready I use Golden pearls or AP-100, or AP-250 from Ziegler. The latter is a larval shrimp feeding material from Aquatic Ecosystem. Note, I also use APR ( artificial plankton rotifer for the first feeding not brine shrimp. APR is much smaller than brine shrimp and is a great first food. This is also from AQS.

When I get over three spawns I move to two bs hatchers otherwise one is generally enough:exact:

[sc569]

I use tall beer glasses that are narrower at the bottom. These are placed inside a bucket of water that has a heater. Obviously, the water level outside the hatchers has to be lower than the glasses' tops. This is how you heat small volumes of water.

Aeration should be done with a plain glass or plastic tube - no airstone. Small air bubbles kill the brine shrimp nauplii.

I keep the temperature around 80 and keep a two hatcher rotation. I feed one entire hatch after 24 hours. So, I have two feeds per day of freshly hatched BS. Theorectically, this is the optimal strategy to maintain the highest nutritional content. I guess I am also losing some since it is unlikely that all of the eggs have hatched. With this regimen, the water also tends to be much cleaner and the hatchers are much easier to clean.

Collecting brine shrimp: I use a gold-plated coffee filter from the grocery store. The coffee filter is placed over a small plastic tub. The brine shrimp hatcher is allowed to settle for some minutes. I collect the brine shrimp with a baster and squirt into the coffee filter. (Squeeze the air out of the baster in the air and get the tip near the bottom of the hatcher before releasing the bulb slowly.) The hatching water is allowed to drain out. I rinse the BS with fresh water and simply swirl the coffee filter into the tank water.

Another possibility is called gut loading. There is an additive called Selcon that is fed to the freshly hatched BS that the nauplii feed upon. This increases the gut contents and boosts their nutritional content. It is a trick (actually, a necessity) that breeders of clownfish have used. This adds maybe 30 minutes to an hour of extra prep time. I have attempted to do this but not consistently so I can't tell you about effectiveness.

[Virginia ranchu]

You can make a brine shrimp hatchery from two 2L soda bottles. Cut the top off of one bottle right where the bottle begins to narrow from the widest part. Cut the bottom off of the other bottle right where it narrows from the widest part. Invert the bottomless bottle with the cap on into the topless bottle so that the cap is upside in between the two bottles. Put some gravel in the topless bottle (the stand) to give it stability. I then use a plastic "coffee can lid" and a piece of rigid tubing to make the lid. Pierce the coffee can lid and insert the tubing so that it reaches the bottom (cap) of the inverted bottle. Connect the rigid tubing to an air pump with flexible tubing. I use an adjustable desk lamp to heat the system. I lower the lamp so that the bulb is near the plastic bottles, and this keeps everything warm. My shrimp are ready to begin hatching in 24 hours.

To collect the bbs, remove the lid and aeration, and lower the lamp so that the light source is near the bottom of the hatchery. When you can see the orange shrimp collecting at the bottom (most hulls will float), use a turkey baster to remove, then rinse through a brine shrimp net.

You will tweak this process as you go, but I won't go into any more details for now.

Rob

[thomasn]

thanks all! I've got them setup with a lightbulb for heat in an enclosure with a lid, hoping for 80.

[johnatoranchu]

Hatching brine shrimp - just do as it says on the tin, that way you get the salinity and loading correct for that particular brand of eggs. I use professional brine shrimp hatchers which can accommodate 17 litres of water. Heater fits inside and valves at the base aid collection. Seperation of shrimp from egg shells can be an issue sometimes and I will be experimenting with this next breeding season. Increase the water temperature in your fry tanks to 80/82F, add a little salt - 3-5 grms per litre - and you will find that the shrimp will live until they are eaten!! Always harvest the hatcher completely so you will need one hatcher for each feed. Number of feeds depends on your time and feeding regime but 2 or 3 each day is probably the most common.
John

[Ichthius]

I use a 1.25 liter soda bottle with the bottom cut off to make a cone. I use one liter water one tablespoon cysts (15 ml) and one tablespoon salt on a 24 hours cycle.

I find that high quality cysts are worth it.

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[johnatoranchu]

Normally recommended loading is 1 grm eggs per litre of water so your loading regime is extraordinarily high David and you may be wasting eggs with too many shrimp dying as soon as they hatch - but, as always, if it works for you ............
John

[mikroll]

I did my first handspawning and I am going get brine shrimp going them before.

How many brine shrimp cultures do you keep running at one time assuming 500 healthy fry?

How do you maintain warmer water temperatures for the shrimp? Water in my aquariums are in the 60s and I would like to maintain the water in the 80s.

any other tips?
hi thomasn , I think that a picture is worth many words . here I show you our artemia breed station , consists of several heated aquariums in order to keep constant supply of live foods. with only 500 young you can do fine with a couple of liters bottles I think.
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c288/mikroll/calico%20oranda/fish/calicopond012.jpg