Live brine

[AquaSixAquaticsReef]

I recently bought a mandarin dragonet. The store I bought it from gave me a baby of live brine shrimp. He told me to just pour it into my tank and they’d be in there for a year for my corals and mandarin. However online says different so I wanted to come here for advice on how to handle this bag of brine shrimp. Thanks!

 

[EnterName]

Brine shrimp don't survive long in our tanks because they are mostly free-swimming in contrast to copepods which will seek surfaces and the substrate.

If you want to offer your mandarins some food you should add copepods which will actually stay in your tank. Whenever I want to increase the pod population I do so when the lights are very dim and turn off the flow. This way they have a chance to get to safety before getting eaten by fish or ending up in corals or the skimmer.

 

[NeedAReef]

IME you cannot have too many copepods and amphipods when you have mandarins or wrasses. Make sure they can be safe, the introduction method mentioned above works well, also, if you have a refugium, great place for them, if you have a back chamber in an all in one, great place for them...you want a population that can survive and reproduce if possible or ya gotta keep adding and adding.

 

[AquaSixAquaticsReef]

IME you cannot have too many copepods and amphipods when you have mandarins or wrasses. Make sure they can be safe, the introduction method mentioned above works well, also, if you have a refugium, great place for them, if you have a back chamber in an all in one, great place for them...you want a population that can survive and reproduce if possible or ya gotta keep adding and adding.

I currently have a refuge spot in my sump but it doesn’t have anything in it at the moment except some bio media. I had thought about adding Chaeto and putting copepods in there but I was unsure the proper way. What would you do with this bag of brine shrimp? There’s a lot of them in there.

 

[EnterName]

If you have a very very fine sieve where these guys don't fall through, I would pour the bag through it, and then feed the brine shrimp nauplii to your fish and corals. If you want to grow them to adult size you will probably lose a majority and need some container with air stone and preferably living phytoplankton so ammonia doesn't accumulate in the culture vessel and the brine shrimp have something to eat.

 

[kevgib67]

Unfortunately they will only live in your tank for 24 to 48 hours. I hatch my own and add in smaller quantities. Copepods are what you’ll want for long term.

 

[NeedAReef]

yep turn the water off dump the bag. if you have a small rubble piece or 3 toss them into the bottom eventually (I have seen fold use old frag plugs in a pile. just to give them places in the sump they will die or get sucked by the pump and .... well snacks....