Frozen brine shrimp as main diet?

[Lasse]

I don't know where the idea the adult brine shrimp have no nutrition got started

I think it start with the conclusion that newly hatched brine shrimp losing their nutrient level because they use it by them self the first days. Hence the Selco trick was invented. Its true for newly hatched brine shrimps but nor for adults. They content the nutrients they eat and that they have when they was frozen.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[PatW]

I have heard that adult brine shrimp are not the best food source. But I have not seen any decent studies. Brine shrimp are whole animals so they have to have a certain quality.

I feed spiralina loaded brine shrimp, mysis shrimp, three kinds of pellets and nori. Theoretically, a pellet or flake can be designed to have any nutrient profile desired. I figure that if the fish accept pellets, feeding pellets from highly regarded manufacturers will help round out the nutritional profile.

 

[ReefTeacher]

Brine shrimp:

Crude Protein-Min 5.0%
Crude Fat-Min 0.8%
Crude Fiber-Max 0.3%
Moisture-Max 92.0%

Baby brine shrimp with egg-sac has higher value. If gut loaded or soaked in vita-chem or selcon boost the value but still only 5%

BBS have higher lipid content , but this not true of protein. From Florida Aqua Farms Plankton Culture Manual (5th ed. 1999):

New hatched Artemia are high in fats with a range of 12-32% of the dry weight. In the metanauplius stage the fat levels decrease to 16.5% and by the time the nauplii reach a pre-adult stage fat levels decrease to 7%. The protein content increases from 42.5% in new hatched nauplii to 62.8% in adult stages.
​

So the protein content increases as the brine shrimp age, it does not decrease. Although the desirable lipids do decrease.

 

[DenverSaltyFarm]

You should give rods food a shot. A little piece everyday feeds the fish and coral to me it’s a win win.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Rods and LRS Both high quality foods.

 

[KannaJuu]

That is a terrible diet for any fish and Selcon will do nothing but wash off as soon as it hits the water. Selcon will only absorb on dry food which IMO should also never be used. Clownfish are not a good indicator of a food value because you can't hardly kill them unless you lay them in a street and have a school bus filled with college lineman drive over them, twice. Clownfish will live on cardboard or paint chips as long as it is a neutral color.

Frozen Brine with no added vitamins is our equivalent to eating potato chips to us.

It might taste good but no nutrition.

Try all the top shelf foods! See what your fish like. I have almost 100 fish and they all have personal preferences. They also are all fed bio-loaded or probiotic upgraded foods with many different beneficial digestive and pro immune bacteria.

I feed my fish:

Zero flake ever, never

all Omega One blood worms (freeze dried) [some often refuse all other food just waiting for this food day] Omega One tubifex (freeze dried); Hikari Blood worms (freeze dried and bio encapsulated); live brine shrimp ( I bioencapsulated myself with spirulina diet and multivitamins), live baby brine (hatched and free swimming, no biocap but with egg yolk), dead frozen SF or Hikari brine (SF not bioencapsulated/Hikari bio encap for multivitamins); API Tropical Mini Sinking Pellets; Sera Spirulina Tablets; Hikari Micro Pellets semi float; Hikari Algae wafers, and a huge one (but micro size) Imagitarium Micro Pellets with probiotics; you get the picture. That's not even half the list of foods I have on hand and feed regularly.

I vary their diets to treat them to their personal favorites often, and provide the widest selection of the most nutritious things I can.

I have four separate species happy enough to be actively breeding right now, so I'm knocking out habitat and nutrition optimization breed by breed until each species has the chance to give me babies and procreate. We'll see how all my fry come out

 

[Cory]

I wanted to bring this thread up despite being older because Im curious about adult brine shrimps having sacks of eggs. Eggs can't be that nutritionally poor, no? Probably this a myth.

 

[Crabby48]

I don't have selcon, but my main question right now is should I go through the hassle of trying to get them to eat mysis if they are happy, healthy and growing on mysis? I can also supplement it with veggie pellets and garlic flakes.

Brine is like sweets. Fish will always want that over food with more fats and proteins. For that reason I use brine to get some fish eating or as occasional food.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Brine is a filler and can act as a laxative but many fish need fats and aminos and I would add at least LRS fish frenzy or similar

 

[Andreas' Reef]

I mostly hear that brine shrimp is more of a treat food that fish find tasty but has less nutritional value than its mysis counterpart. Some soak live brines in a vitamin supplement so the more picky fish may eat it.

 

[SteveMM62Reef]

I feed mine off of the Four Cuisine Frozen Food Cube package. They also like Pygmy Angel Frozen Formula. Have an Auto Feeder, with Flake, and Small Pellets, that contain garlic. They breed in my Display, but I don’t have the set up to raise the fry. So I’d say they are healthy. They only get frozen food, one to two times a week.

 

[Lasse]

In this thread several persons still use the myth that wild adult artemia is low in nutrient, Adult Brine shrimp have the nutrient the food have give them. The figures here about the nutrient content is based on wet weight. Can´t be compared with nutrient levels in dry food without a multiplicand of 7 or 10. With all wet food - you need to feed with more compared with dry food. In this thread - I refer to my 2 years old aquarium - but it was 2018. Now it is more than 6 years old - still no dry food at all. Only adult brine shrimps and freshwater cyclops.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[atoll]

Interested to hear opinions... I've heard many times that there is almost no nutritional value in brine shrimp.

In live from the LFS due to them having nothing to eat. Live brine shrimp need to be fed to your fish as soon as the LFS gets them in. It's not the brine shrimp but the gut loaded in them where the nutritional value is. That is what the brine shrimp have been feed on the shrimp being the carrier mainly nutritional wise.

 

[vetteguy53081]

For many years its been said that brine is a filler and mainly water and low nutrition and actually contains lipids and fats and is 61% protein and a good addition to fill nutritional voids with dry foods. Unlike worms and other foods, brine is rarely if ever wasted often being the first to be consumed, enticing fish to eat and even assisting with constipation in fish HOWEVER because of its small size, it cannot fill any large fishs' stomach and can be considered a supplement to other foods offered.

 

[Cory]

Does anyone know of a sort of nutritional profile with vitamins and minerals brine contains?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Does anyone know of a sort of nutritional profile with vitamins and minerals brine contains?

Brine shrimp nutrient percentage​
1. Protein	61.6%
2. Intravenous lipid emulsion	3.8%
3. Leucine	8.9%
4. Phenylalanine	4.9%
5. Tyrosine	5.4%
6. Lysine	8.9%
7. Calcium	5%
8. Arginine	7.3%
9. Glutamic acid	12.9%
10. Glycine	5%

 

[Lasse]

Old review that compare different wild strains of artemia

https://www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/ocrd/133989.pdf

There is rather few studies of wild adult Artemia´s nutritional values - most of the studies concentrate on Artemia Nauplius - often referred as brine shrimp. With Nauplius - the nutrition in the yolk sac are rapidly consumed - hence the myth of grown artemia bad nutrition value. Wild catch frozen adult artemia has more or less the same nutrition profile as a newly hatched brine shrimp. According to protein - it can be higher

These studies shows that on growing artemia has higher protein content than Nauplius and the content of fatty acids are depended of the food - this is shown in the second article

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/anu.13101

Biomass production and nutritional value of Artemia sp. (Anostraca: Artemiidae) in Campeche, México

Sincerely Lasse