Breeding brine shrimp

Basic reefer

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Okay so I know live food is really good for your fish so I am researching brine shrimp. The fish i want to get are to big to eat other live foods and brine shrimp seem to be the easiest to take care of. So idk if anyone knows the answer to this but will brine shrimp hatch the babies if they are in stable water conditions? You can buy brine shrimp cysts and hatch them from that but if the water conditions are stable will the parents just lay eggs? Or do they always lay eggs with cysts? I want to add adult brine shrimp to my tank and have them breed for a little bit before adding my fish but if the eggs are always in the cysts I wont. Because they are bad for fish and can cause water quality issues. Anyways thank you, if you understand what I am asking.
 

Bill_Moorman

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You can make a simple brine shrimp hatchery using a 2 liter bottle, airpump, and airstone.

That being said, I have never had success getting them to adulthood, even buying the seamonkey kit as a kid. I would say you might not have success in them reaching adulthood in a reef tank, but as cheap as they are...why not?
 

Jonddk

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I agree with Bill. They are easy enough to hatch but to get them to adult size and have a self sustaining breeding population is probably a lot of work.
 

Uncle99

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I don’t think Baby Brine carry a lot of nutrition for fish, but if this is what you want to do, gut load them with phyto and Selcon say 4 hours before feeding.

A good high protein pellet is easier to deploy.
 

SmugglersReef

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I’m trying this right now. I just hatched a tablespoon of eggs. That’s a lot of shrimp. I then transferred them over to 2.5 Gallons of water with a sponge filter, heater and light. I fed all my fish and corals a bunch of the babies as soon as they hatched. They are nutritious for about 24 hours only. Tomorrow their eyes and anus will open and they will be hungry. I will start feeding them phytoplankton and after that I will have to figure a way to clean their tank without hurting the shrimp. It’s a lot of work but I’m kind of stuck in the house anyway.

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Jonddk

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I’m trying this right now. I just hatched a tablespoon of eggs. That’s a lot of shrimp. I then transferred them over to 2.5 Gallons of water with a sponge filter, heater and light. I fed all my fish and corals a bunch of the babies as soon as they hatched. They are nutritious for about 24 hours only. Tomorrow their eyes and anus will open and they will be hungry. I will start feeding them phytoplankton and after that I will have to figure a way to clean their tank without hurting the shrimp. It’s a lot of work but I’m kind of stuck in the house anyway.

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Good luck. Let us know how it goes.
 

SmugglersReef

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So I failed after my first attempt. Most the shrimp died I believe from attempting to clean the holding tank and possibly too much Spirulina water. Since 3 packets of Shrimp Hatch mix came with hatchery, I’m going to give it 2 more tries. I like experimenting and building and with all this down time I am keeping myself busy.

What I changed this time:
  • A bigger, sturdier hatching bottle and used the high PH water that came in it (not that this makes a difference)
  • Going to feed half the hatched Artemia to both my reef tanks to lessen the amount to go into the new holding tank
  • Bought a 5.5 gallon tank from Petco on sale. If my third attempt fails it will make a nice Nano planted tank
  • Will not use the sponge filter until the shrimp become sub adults after 8 days
  • Will only use a bubbler for the first eight days
  • Will feed less spirulina and not attempt to clean the tank
  • Will use the dilution method of filtration if I make it that far
Seems like the successful brine shrimp breeders use live algae grown themselves in their holding tanks and the shrimps thrive. Again, this is just a fun experiment to pass the time. I originally used the Artemia to feed some baby marine fish that were being finicky, but after one week the tiny yellow watchman goby is eating like a pig.

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PatW

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Brine shrimp are easy to hatch. I have read about raising adults. It is a matter of putting them in a big tub of salt water and getting some decent algae growth for them to feed on. I have never tried it. Hatching the baby brine shrimp is easy.
 

ichthyogeek

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Do do dododo, oh look another artemia thread!


Adults will bear live young (no cysts) in the right conditions, which I believe is a lower salinity around 1.018 or so, and with good water conditions (don't let the nitrates skyrocket essentially).

I've been able to culture them to at least juvenile, maybe adult stage in outdoor buckets, but you have to make sure to keep them fed, while maintaining water quality. They can deal with a lot of ignorance/lack of maintenance, but you can't just dump in a can of spirulina powder and call it a day.

If you decide to use air movement in the tank, only do it at a slow rate, maybe a bubble every 2-3 seconds to 2-3 bubbles/second, and don't use an airstone. Make sure to stock lightly, which will reduce water quality issues, and allow you to go further with your feedings. Do not use a sponge filter - brine shrimp are very, very weak swimmers.

If you get into culturing microalgae, then Dunaliella's a safe bet, as is Nannochloropsis (and no, you probably won't be able to culture it from phyto-feast live).
 

SmugglersReef

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All good info here. I will probably save the last packet of eggs for my next project - a planted Nano with crystal shrimp, but I thought I would post an update.

The shrimp hatched last night at about 29 hours. There is just way too many in these premade packets. I removed half the Artemia and fed to both my reef tanks, 100 gallon and 30 gallon. The smaller fish and juveniles have been eating for an hour now non stop. They are not slowing down.

I have 3 holding tanks now for the Artemia as a test. The original 5 gallon which has an air bubbler and a 4 ml of spirulina water (I mixed one teaspoon in 8 ounces of RODI) I set up 2 more holding tanks both with half a gallon of seawater at 1.026 and only 5ml of Artemia each. One has an air bubble with phytoplankton (just a few drops) and the other has spirulina and no air stone.

I very carefully siphoned off egg casings from the top of the water on the 5 gallon tank. So for now I will just monitor the tanks and the color of the spirulina. Last time I had one tank that I removed the Artemia to clean and then refilled with a darker green spirulina water. The nitrates were at 10ppn and nitrites were at .1. There was no ammonia but after I did the cleaning procedure the next day almost all of them were gone (presumably dead).

All in all it’s been interesting but like other have said, way too much work to grow them to adults. If you are raising fresh water fry then this is a no brainer. But attempting to get them large enough to have a constant supply for your larger marine fish is just not worth the return verses the effort. My original goal was to just get my new tiny marine fish to eat in the 30 gallon innovative marine tank and that did the trick.

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SaltySerenity

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I know this is an old thread but I've had success with culturing them to adulthood almost exactly the same way I culture rotifers. I hatch out the brine shrimp in a separate container, filter the eggs from the bbs, add to a 5 gallon bucket filled with live nannochloropsis water. I have a rigid airline going at a slow bubble to keep everything moving. I specifically don't have a light over it because the shrimp are attracted to light and will die of exhaustion if they keep trying to swim against the current towards the light. I water change them once or twice a week by pouring them through a sieve set and then adding them to clean phyto water. I just try to keep the water at a medium green color where I can't see down to the bottom and that's been working pretty well. I've kept this batch going for about a month now and they're doing super well. This is after literal months of tearing my hair out trying to figure out what I was doing wrong and why all my cultures were crashing of course.
 
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