30g tank too large for brine shrimp grow out?

[SteveG_inDC]

I’m trying my hand at raising adult brine shrimp, or at least but loading the babies I’ve been hatching.

is a 30g tank too big for this? I had it running as a QT but never used any medication. It happens to be cycled with sponges. I just left the light and heater on but turned off the filter and power head and added an air line. Add bbs, occasional dab of spirulina powder and wait, right?

 

[xxkenny90xx]

Seems like a good plan to me but I'm not too familiar with but loading shrimp........

 

[SteveG_inDC]

*gut loading

 

[sacutshall]

Have you figured out how you will harvest them?
seems like a lot of space to b randomly swing a net.

 

[Tired]

Probably too large to be convenient. To gutload baby brine shrimp, you want a lot of shrimp and a lot of food in a relatively small space. Otherwise they can't find much food.

That said, why are you gutloading BBS? They're most nutritious when freshly hatched, because of the nutrients in the yolk. By the time they're starting to eat, they've used up that yolk, and have lost most of their nutrition.

 

[SteveG_inDC]

Probably too large to be convenient. To gutload baby brine shrimp, you want a lot of shrimp and a lot of food in a relatively small space. Otherwise they can't find much food.

That said, why are you gutloading BBS? They're most nutritious when freshly hatched, because of the nutrients in the yolk. By the time they're starting to eat, they've used up that yolk, and have lost most of their nutrition.

The goal is to raise them to adulthood.

 

[Tired]

Adult BBS are really not nutritious at all. More like treats than anything. For that amount of effort, you're better off either trying to culture mysis, or buying frozen versions of more nutritious foods.

 

[SteveG_inDC]

Adult BBS are really not nutritious at all. More like treats than anything. For that amount of effort, you're better off either trying to culture mysis, or buying frozen versions of more nutritious foods.

To be honest, this project is really just for fun. I had the equipment lying around and I'm making more bbs than my fish need right now with even a small hatchery.

The more helpful replies to this thread have been about stocking density, so I'll think about using a smaller tank or setting the water level much lower in this one.

 

[Tired]

Oh, so you want pets! I see now. Yeah, higher stocking density is a good idea.

You could also read up on fairy shrimp. They're like freshwater brine shrimp, but can be colorful. If you like keeping the brine shrimp, you might like fairy shrimp. They're easy to keep, can be hatched from (cheap) eggs, and die of old age after a couple months.

I've kept fairy shrimp a few times, and you generally want a tank no bigger than 5-10 gallons. Care for them is very similar to brine shrimp, so that's probably a good max size for brine shrimp keeping as well. Really, a big jar can work.

 

[biophilia]

The notion that adult brine are inherently without nutrition is a bit of a misconception. When you raise them to full adults, or at least after Instar V-ish, they may not have the high fatty acid content of nauplii with yolk intact, but they have a high protein content and can be pretty easily gut-loaded with whatever you want. It's pretty common to use gut-loaded adults as a major food staple for larval fish...

The problem with the 30g tank is that until you get population density really high, you may end up fouling the water and causing population crashes by feeding enough dead algae or spirulina to ensure adequate nutrition. The way around that would be to feed live phytoplankton like Isochrysis galbana, but you'd need to culture a lot of it. It might be easier to raise them to adulthood and enrich with powder foods if you use a two bucket system with airstones and alternate between buckets every few days while doing a 50% water change by draining carefully through a sieve to catch the adults.

That's not to say it won't work, though. If you continue with the 30g, post updates on how it goes!

 

[SteveG_inDC]

The notion that adult brine are inherently without nutrition is a bit of a misconception. When you raise them to full adults, or at least after Instar V-ish, they may not have the high fatty acid content of nauplii with yolk intact, but they have a high protein content and can be pretty easily gut-loaded with whatever you want. It's pretty common to use gut-loaded adults as a major food staple for larval fish...

The problem with the 30g tank is that until you get population density really high, you may end up fouling the water and causing population crashes by feeding enough dead algae or spirulina to ensure adequate nutrition. The way around that would be to feed live phytoplankton like Isochrysis galbana, but you'd need to culture a lot of it. It might be easier to raise them to adulthood and enrich with powder foods if you use a two bucket system with airstones and alternate between buckets every few days while doing a 50% water change by draining carefully through a sieve to catch the adults.

That's not to say it won't work, though. If you continue with the 30g, post updates on how it goes!

Thanks. After 2 or 3 days I can barely see anything in the tank. Maybe it's the low density or maybe they didn't survive. I'll try a more concentrated light source to see if I can get them to cluster. At this point I'm just messing around to see what I can learn. If I try with my next batch of BBS I may drain the water down to just a few inches or use a smaller container, which is what most people do.

 

[ThePurple12]

I used to grow them out for my seahorses in a 2 gallon aquarium. Decent aeration, fed with Spirulina powder, although this isn’t ideal because some will settle at the bottom and rot, which equals higher maintenance. The best thing to feed would be phyto feast or live phyto.

IME the tank should be slightly tinted with whatever you’re feeding.

 

[jgirardnrg]

Doing the same thing in a 2.5g tank... so far so good

 

[Doctorgori]

I’m not calling anyone out but my advise deviates a lil.
Shrimp are what they eat, and can be a good feed when raised on phyto. I got 50+ seahorses right now raised on nothing but....
I’d get a 10G and hit it with a few drops of Guliards and a bottle of nano or whatever. A cheapo light and add a couple hatches of bbs and maybe some tisbe s or tiggers. I will run like that for. few weeks before you gotta reset it. You’ll get plenty of mid sized BBS in a few weeks and can harvest for a while if you drop a 1/4 tsp of hatched bbs in every few days.
that 30G can work tho....

 

[Doctorgori]

Adult BBS are really not nutritious at all. More like treats than anything. For that amount of effort, you're better off either trying to culture mysis, or buying frozen versions of more nutritious foods.

thats mostly True for the frozen brown/red ones... the Spirulna are fine.
...BTW I have combed the web for mysis culture. Even if you can find a decent recipe, It’s FAR from being easy/nailed down for home culture, whereas BBS culture is well known