Live Brine Shrimp

[Jin]

I got some of these for the 1st time last week for a special treat for my fish.

They went over well to say the least.  I've never seen my male pearl gourami act they way he did.  He was swimming back & forth across the tank as fast as he could to try and find any I dropped in & would ram any other fish out of his way including my poor little 8" pictus cat who almost had one...

Anyway...

They next day, at least 60% of what remaind were dead.  How do I keep them alive?

And is there an easy way to get them out of the bag & into the tanks?  I was using a spoon & draining the "water" they were in, but was thinking an eye dropper would work much better.

Thanks.

 

[colesea]

Well, the easiest way I know of to get them out of the bag and into the tank is to first drain the bag into a well risned bowl (perferribly one reserved for the fish tank), then to use a brine shrimp net you can get from your LFS to scoop them out of the bowl, giving them a little rinse with a sqirt bottle of fresh water (get all that nasty LFS water off them as well as wash off salt you don't want your fishies to eat), then inverting the net through the tank water. A brine shrimp net is made for the purpose of scooping brine shrimp, it has a finer mesh that is usually white if you purchase a Aquatic Gardens net.  If you can concentrate them, using a large dropper also works to pick them up with, but they have to be really concentrated or else you'll be chasing them one by one, which could be entertaining, and allow you to selectively feed your fishies so your gourmi won't beat your pictus to crap.

As far as keeping them alive..well, considering Artimia (the genus of brine shrimp and sea monkies) are salt water creatures, you're not going to keep them alive for very long in a freshwater aquarium.  The mechanisms for culturing Artimia aren't all that complex if you purchase cysts and hatch them out, but keeping the adults alive is a difficulty because they feed on planktonic algea and zooplankton, which, unless you have green salt water, is kinda hard to reproduce. You could try keeping them in a mildly air-rated bowl of the water they came in, but I don't think they'll last much more than a day that way without food. Better just to purchase a smaller amount next time.  

Something else you could do is use whatever live stuff you want to that day, then freeze the remainder in ice cube trays. It won't be live after the freezing, but you'll have some to thaw for treats later on. Fishies like frozen brine shrimp just as much as the live stuff. Just don't re-freeze thawed stuff, it goes nasty really fast, and thaw-refreeze-thaw makes for bad food.
~~Colesea

 

[JWright]

Just a suggestion for concentrating them, if you put them in a glass bowl, then take it into a dark room and put a light next to the bowl, they'll gather around the light.

In theory you can keep Artemia alive, but they lose most if not all of their nutritional value after the first day or so.

Josh

 

[Cackett]

so if i was to buy a little Bowl and Put A Salt Water in ti i could keep The Shrimp Alive longer Would there Be any chaance of them Growign and havign kids i Would Think that it cant be hard to bread all thos little things.. ??

 

[JWright]

They can be bred, but it really isn't worth it. By the time they reach adulthood, they have no nutritional value whatsoever.

If you need baby brine shrimp, just buy the eggs at the store and hatch them.

Josh

 

[Cackett]

thanks for that i think i just buy then.. at 30p a bag its not  bad.
i got them the otherday just to see if my fish liked them and they Do. they love them never seem the  so happy / Hungry for them.. even My Zebra Loves Them..