hatching brine shrimp?

[exhumed07]

Well i came out way ahead at my swap meet on sunday. 13 yellow lab cichlids, and 6 flametails, a bushy nose, and 100 grams of brine shrimp eggs for 20 bucks. bushy nose is doing good and so are the cichlids. all nice and active. but i have never tried to hatch my own brine shrimp and i know a few people here raise angels and thought maybe u would know how to do it. i went on youtube and found instructions on how to build a pop bottle hatchery. i built one and have some eggs in it right now. the water is about 80 degrees where it's sitting and the gravity of the water is at about 1.014-1.016. is this a good setup? and how long will it take for the shrimp to hatch? the water is constantly churning with the air going into the water with a good boil. any tips, hints, or other types of help would be much appreciated

 

[Lotus]

I've tried a few different setups over the years. My favorite is this one: Brine Shrimp Hatchery by Hobby separates egg shells with no moving parts because it separates the shrimp from the eggshells.

I've also used the small Shrimpery one: San Francisco Bay's Brine Shrimp Hatchery - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com which was pretty good and they sell it at most fish stores/chain pet stores.

I've not done well with the soda bottle style, mostly because it doesn't separate the eggs well and I find them to be a general pain in the neck to use. For me, the more a pain something is, the less likely I am to use it. And, of course, fresh brine shrimp are some of the best food for fry, so it's good to make sure you're going to use the item regularly.

This is, of course, just my opinion. I've usually only wanted small quantities of brine shrimp for angels/banggai cardinals/other fry, rather than a lot of them. The small batches I've gotten from the two commercial feeders have been enough for small broods of most of the fish I've raised.

 

[exhumed07]

Im wanting them for my guppies and for my fry cichlids mostly as kinda like a boost. i have plenty of baby foods for them. just wanting a small boost since i got the eggs. they were free after all lol

 

[FroggyFox]

I haven't done this for a long time, but I have one of these

and it worked very well. You only use a bit of the eggs each time and when they hatch they come into the cup up top and you can just toss that whole thing or part of it into a tank, then you toss the water with the shells and can start again.

Good luck, sounds like your setup is working I only ever remember putting warm water in the bottom part, but it usually just stayed room temperature after that. I think as long as it doesn't get too low they'll hatch.

 

[lauraf]

The warmer the water (not too high, of course!) the faster they hatch. I had a very DIY setup when I had angel fry. Just a small tub of warm water, an aerator, and a pinch of salt. I used a fine mesh net to catch the BBS that were swimming around - the hatched eggs will sink to the bottom. I kept two batches going in rotation, as the eggs can take 24-48 hours to hatch - with two rotating batches, I always had a fresh supply of BBS for my fry.

 

[exhumed07]

i noticed alot of eggs floating on the top. i thought those were the hatched eggs. and i am noticing alot more hatching. but it been taking 3 days for a good amount to hatch. i'm just putting a straw in the water while blocking off the end out of the water and then releasing to suck up the shrimp and then placing that in the water and slowly releasing the brine shrimp. but o'm only getting maybe a dozen shrimp at a time that way. nothing like what i have been seeing on youtube where the straw is pink with shrimp. it's working but not nearly as efficiently as i had hoped. but what can u ecpect when u make a hatchery out of junk in about 20 min lol.

 

[lauraf]

Yeah it took me a few tries to get the proportion of salt optimal, and the heat, and the aeration, so you can play with those things. I used a mini-baster to suction up the shrimp - you can shine a flashlight on one side of the container and they will cluster densely around the light - and then sprayed them into the net so that I wasn't adding a bunch of salt water to my angel grow out tank when I fed them.

 

[exhumed07]

i have my hydrometer left over from when i had my salt tank and use that for the specific gravity. and right now i have an upturned bottle with a suction cup in the neck to creat a nice bowl in the bottom where no eggs can get stuck with an open airline going through the middle of the suction cup. thats what i am using. it has a generous boil to the water. and the temp may be a bit cold. i have it in the stand under my 20 gallon tank with no heater or anything and with being by the floor it's the coldest part of the room and it's against the outside wall which is concrete. so i imagine that may be the biggest issue.

 

[KcMopar]

I dont heat mine nor do I light mine either other then the surroundings (Mine are on a counter top). I also hatch them in straight SW 1.026 most times because its easy to steal from my tanks and that water has tiny food particles for them to eat when they hatch. I have the hatchery base that accepts a 2L bottle with an air line fitting at the bottom. Once they hatch I let the water and hatched shrimp flow through the air line and into the tank but stop it when the egg shell and unhatched eggs start to enter the air line. Mine normally hatch in about 36-48 hours. I have done it this way for about 2 decades. When I first started I screened them out and that is the proper way you should do it I guess. However, I have never used them for FW only SW feeding. They are so cheap now days compared to back in the day. I should do it more but I only hatch them a few times a year now days.

 

[exhumed07]

see with the suction cup on the bottom of the bottle like i have, any shells laying on the bottom get imediatly sucked up into the hose. i kinda thought about doing that as well lol. and i been doing my water at about 1.08-1.02. in that range. i was going by the directions on the can. and from my understanding these are high quality eggs i got. i see them at the lfs saying 75% or 90% brine shrimp but my can says 100%. not realy sure what that means but hey i'm taking it as a plus lol.

 

[KcMopar]

I have bought many different claimed packages and never could say I seen any noticeable amount of difference.

 

[exhumed07]

i tried the light trick and that realy seems to help with gathering them up. but overall i think my setup is working. all be it slowly. but since i have no fish dependent on them for food time is not that big of a deal.