Brine Shrimp

does anyone raise these for fish food?
if so is this a good place to get them?
Artemia Reference Center in Ghent, Belgium

Edited by CATfishTONY, 28 September 2008 - 08:07 PM.

In my experience brine shrimp are a hassle. It's much easier to keep a freshwater microcrustacean (daphnia, copepods, etc.) colony going, and the animals are nutritious at all stages.

If you do want to raise brine shrimp, there's no need to order them from Belgium. Most pet stores carry encysted brine shrimp eggs and sea salt. If yours doesn't have any in stock, ask them to order it for you.

In my experience brine shrimp are a hassle. It's much easier to keep a freshwater microcrustacean (daphnia, copepods, etc.) colony going, and the animals are nutritious at all stages.

If you do want to raise brine shrimp, there's no need to order them from Belgium. Most pet stores carry encysted brine shrimp eggs and sea salt. If yours doesn't have any in stock, ask them to order it for you.

Ok thank's
the only reason i chose them was they say theirs (SM)(brine shrimp)
are clean of all man made contaminated stuff.
should i choose a better food for my hatch?
lets say egg whites
then something else as they grow?
i plan on breeding flat head minnows to feed my fish.
my second tank is set up for this only just food.
to feed the sunfish i have.
is daphnia hard to raise?
do i need another set up just for them?
is this a good link to read?

http://www.caudata.org/daphnia/#intro

thanks for the help Newt
have a good day!!!
Tony

Edited by CATfishTONY, 29 September 2008 - 08:05 PM.

What fish are you raising? I have little experience raising fry, but I'm sure dietary needs are very different among species.

What fish are you raising? I have little experience raising fry, but I'm sure dietary needs are very different among species.

i have longears
and one shiner
and some green sunfish

i have longears
and one shiner
and some green sunfish

this is the fish i would like to feed
with baby flat head minnows
or maybe rosy red minnows
these are easy for me to get around here.

That seems like a good link. Daphnia are pretty easy. It's a good idea to keep more than one colony going, just in case one crashes. If you are using them as a starter food for your minnows, you might want one of the smaller daphnids, such as Ceriodaphnia or Moina. You can usually get a pretty good assortment of daphnids and other microcrustaceans by running a very fine net, such as a brine shrimp net, through slow-moving water; they can be raised together. Alternatively, you can order specific cultures; they tend to be exspensive, though.

From what I understand, fathead and rosy red fry can eat finely ground flake food from day one. They would appreciate live prey, but it is not a necessity.

Edited by Newt, 29 September 2008 - 08:34 PM.

That seems like a good link. Daphnia are pretty easy. It's a good idea to keep more than one colony going, just in case one crashes. If you are using them as a starter food for your minnows, you might want one of the smaller daphnids, such as Ceriodaphnia or Moina. You can usually get a pretty good assortment of daphnids and other microcrustaceans by running a very fine net, such as a brine shrimp net, through slow-moving water; they can be raised together. Alternatively, you can order specific cultures; they tend to be exspensive, though.

From what I understand, fathead and rosy red fry can eat finely ground flake food from day one. They would appreciate live prey, but it is not a necessity.

Newt this small food is in the water i fish?
all i need is a small net as in micron small or just little?
this is all new to me i just started keeping my bait alive long term.
i never stopped to think about feeding the baites food
let alone there food and so on...

Check out this link to the Greater Cincinnati Aquarium Society. It has several suggested methods for raising live foods, including Brine Shrimp. You'll see the articles near the bottom of this page: http://www.gcas.org/...cles/index.html

Brine Shrimp Hatchery - by Jim Foreman

Culturing Microworms - by John Sipes & Mark Weierman (7/2003)

Raising Daphnia - by Bill Childers

Raising Vinegar Eels - by Bob Maichle

I'm sure many of these techniques can be adapted for other species of live foods as well.
I hope this helps,
-Thom

Those will certainly help.

Tony- yes, microcrustaceans (including daphnids, copepods, and ostracods) occur in most waters and are an important part of the diet of many fishes, especially juveniles. They occur in highest densities in ponds and puddles with few predators, and their abundances change seasonally, but you can usually find some in any slow-moving water.

I have had good luck collecting microcrustaceans with the nets sold as 'brine shrimp nets' and with the blue semi-cylindrical nets sold at PetsMart (the ones with a rod for a handle, not twisted wire). The advantage of the blue nets is that they come in larger sizes and are a bit sturdier; the mesh may be a little coarser but you'll still get plenty of critters with them. Micron nets are not necessary; these bugs are usually poppyseed-to-sesame-seed sized.

Again, these little guys are a great addition to your baitfish's food, but the minnows you are considering will also readily eat standard flake food. Just crush it in your fingers to a size appropriate for your fish; for fry you will want to crush it to a fine powder, for adult fish it can be much coarser.

Thanks again for all of the help.
I have been reading and allot of google these days.
just got home with my new meal worm starter kit.
A friend of mine set me up.
His brood is now 13 years old
He keeps them to cut the cost of bait down.
to catch bait to go fishing with.
I now have 300/400 1/2" to 5/8" long meal worms
about the size of a toothpick.

I hope people don't think hatching baby brine shrimp is hard. I have been hatching about 12,000 shrimp per batch for the last 17 of 20 years.

Key - Don't buy a vial from a pet shop.

Buy a pound can online - which will be fresh. Buy 40 pounds of salt from a livestock store (Tractor Supply Company) or Solar / Sun salt water softening salt. An inverted pop bottle, an air line, a gravy fat separator, and a net made from some old spandex is all you need.

Great for elassoma, darters, baby sunfish, killies.

I'll agree with Philip on this.
Raising artemia is easy. Just get a soda bottle, add salt, water, eggs, and a air pump and you'll have nauplii in under 12 hours.

If you're raising fry, there's an egg yolk recipe that Bruce (Fundulus) knows of that I've seen used with good success..

Edited by AndrewAcropora, 20 October 2008 - 10:28 PM.

I'll agree with Philip on this.
Raising artemia is easy. Just get a soda bottle, add salt, water, eggs, and a air pump and you'll have nauplii in under 12 hours.

If you're raising fry, there's an egg yolk recipe that Bruce (Fundulus) knows of that I've seen used with good success..

When I hatch brine shrimp,
depending on the brand of eggs purchased,
the eggs hatch in less than 24 hours if kept at 80F and with a light,
36 hours at 74F,
and
48 hours at 70F.

Are you buying decapsulated eggs?
You can do it yourself with chlorine bleach. It eats off the egg coating and allows you to add the water+shrimp to the tank without the messy capsules.
Decapsulated eggs almost always hatch in under 12 hours in my experience.

I really like using brine shrimp too. I use the empty soda bottles from the kitchen and scoop saltwater right out of my big marine tank.
I really like having two or three bottles going at once, started on consecutive days. That way I always have a reliable source of good quantity and know for sure how big they will be. Catching and sorting daphnia, cyclops etc. gets pretty time consuming.

I'm also not convinced daphnia or cyclops have great nutritional value compared to freshly hatched brine. I've raised up fry of dozens of species on brine so I know it works. I wasn't too impressed with the results I got recently with mudminnow fry trying to keep them on two species of daphnia and several species of copepods I got locally. Fry grew very slowly and never fed with the same enthusiasm as they did on the brine.

I use the empty soda bottles from the kitchen and scoop saltwater right out of my big marine tank.

You might get faster/better hatch rates if you increase the salinity some. Typical marine aquariums have their Specific Gravity too low for proper hatching of Brine Shrimp (1.060 is best!!). Though if you raise it too high the shrimp will turn red as they start producing hemoglobin to compensate for the decreased dissolved oxygen (though adults will produce eggs readily this way {it's an environmental cue that their vernal pool is drying up}).
Oh, and...
If you raise too many nauplii, freeze them to prevent them from using up their yolk sacs.

You might get faster/better hatch rates if you increase the salinity some. Typical marine aquariums have their Specific Gravity too low for proper hatching of Brine Shrimp (1.060 is best!!). Though if you raise it too high the shrimp will turn red as they start producing hemoglobin to compensate for the decreased dissolved oxygen (though adults will produce eggs readily this way {it's an environmental cue that their vernal pool is drying up}).
Oh, and...
If you raise too many nauplii, freeze them to prevent them from using up their yolk sacs.

I know brine like high salinity but one day I had no salt handy so I tried the tank water. It worked just fine, most hatched within 24 hours. Maybe I had more unhatched eggs than I would have otherwise, but not a huge amount. Those store bought vials always have a certain quantity of unhatched eggs anyway.
Nevertheless, I'm sure it's better to use the higher salinity. I'm just lazy and cheap.

Whatever works!
A friend of mine was hatching them with table salt in his dorm room.. True story.

I know brine like high salinity but one day I had no salt handy so I tried the tank water. It worked just fine, most hatched within 24 hours. Maybe I had more unhatched eggs than I would have otherwise, but not a huge amount. Those store bought vials always have a certain quantity of unhatched eggs anyway.
Nevertheless, I'm sure it's better to use the higher salinity. I'm just lazy and cheap.

Well my first batch of BS is dead.
looked ok after work i feed them a yeast mix and was of to my local pet shop
came home and all were dead air hose fell out of the soda bottle may
have been the kittens not sure.
second batch is ok i allso seem to have more this time
water is pink three inches deep with tons in whole water colum
p/u a pack to feed first bites for new born fry
will the BS be able to eat this?
it has wheat flour fish meal and yeast seaweed spirulina and so on

Edited by CATfishTONY, 22 October 2008 - 06:25 PM.