Mesh size to filter brine nauplii from casings

[Karen00]

Hello fellow saltines,

My brine shrimp setup does a pretty good job of separating the brine shrimp egg casings from the nauplii but sometimes when I get near the bottom (after a couple days of draining) I get some of the egg casings mixed in with the nauplii. I just purchased some sieves in 120, 300, 460 and 900 microns to try and filter them. Are any of these (or a combination) good for filtering the casings out? I think I read the casings are smaller than the nauplii but I'm not sure. I can also get different mesh sizes of needed.

 

[Doctorgori]

I haven’t figured this out and it’s been decades…. seems some to a few eggs always sink
IMO the best or easiest way to get near 100% egg free bbs is by drawing them to a collection point with light …

 

[Karen00]

I haven’t figured this out and it’s been decades…. seems some to a few eggs always sink
IMO the best or easiest way to get near 100% egg free bbs is by drawing them to a collection point with light …

Thanks! I'm already doing this with the inverted method with a bubbler where they swim down. This is the one where after a few draw downs the egg casings start to mingle with the nauplii. Actually they're juveniles by now because this is about five days later. I don't like wasting them so I'm gut loading by now. I hate wasting even a few live ones but this is when the casings start getting mixed with them. I'm trying one where they swim up to the light but this doesn't have a bubbler (and the design doesn't allow for one) and I don't think I get as good of a hatch rate without the bubbler. That's why I was hoping to find a sieve to use with my inverted setup.

 

[Karen00]

@Doctorgori I just purchased a sieve set to try and filter my brine shrimp from the egg casings. The set (Brand: called "Hobby" and the set is called "Artemia Sieve Combination"). It comes with a 120, 300, 560 and 900 micron sieves. Trying them in combination I found combining the 560 on top of the 300 works the best. I stack the 560 over the 300 and then hold this over a bowl. The 560 catches any bigger gunk that's not needed and the 300 catches the juveniles and possibly larger nauplii nicely and the casings pass through into the bowl. I tried using the 120 on the bottom but that is too fine a mesh. It catches the smallest nauplii and the egg casings. I need to find a mesh between 120 and 300 (or maybe a couple sizes between these) to do more granular filtering of the smaller nauplii. It's possible the smallest are the same size as the casings in which case I will toss them back into the hatchery to let them grow out a bit more. Probably the best solution would be to buy either decapsulated eggs or decapsulate them myself. It just seems like too much work to do myself and too expensive to buy. The filters work great so I just need to find another one or two that will further filter for the teenies. I hope this helps.

 

[Doctorgori]

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried decapsulating eggs. You can do it but IMO it doesn’t save much work but it does keep the unsightly empty egg casings off the waterline … sometimes For large batches I rig up a plastic shoebox, black duct tape and a lightbulb thingie

 

[Karen00]

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried decapsulating eggs. You can do it but IMO it doesn’t save much work but it does keep the unsightly empty egg casings off the waterline … sometimes For large batches I rig up a plastic shoebox, black duct tape and a lightbulb thingie

The instructions I read on decapsulating sounded time consuming and a pain in the **** but I agree about the egg casings being unsightly. I also get concerned about my fish eating them because I read on here it's not good for them and I get concerned about the casings possibly sticking to their gills. There is always something that makes the live food less than desirable to deal with. For me I can't get copepods to reproduce. Brine shrimp I can get to hatch but then there's the stupid egg casings to deal with. Worm cultures always end up crashing on me. Ugh!!

Hopefully I can find the correct filter size for the smaller nauplii. I found a set of sieves that are in between 120 and 300 so I'm going to buy those and see if I can use them to get more granular. I will keep you posted.

 

[Doctorgori]

tisbe and tigger pods aren’t hard, I can keep tiggers going the longest but there are a few here on R2R that actually sell them along with apocyclops (spelling)
I’ve been trying Reef Nutritions dead phyto concentrate for simplicity ,but live phyto and tiggers is the easiest combo IMO
added; one thing to watch out for when straining bbs eggs is the size of the cyst. GSL eggs are larger than SF strains or those darker eggs from Asia. In fact I keep some SF brand eggs as a first food for Marine fry as Instar I and II is supposedly smaller

 

[Karen00]

tisbe and tigger pods aren’t hard, I can keep tiggers going the longest but there are a few here on R2R that actually sell them along with apocyclops (spelling)
I’ve been trying Reef Nutritions dead phyto concentrate for simplicity ,but live phyto and tiggers is the easiest combo IMO
added; one thing to watch out for when straining bbs eggs is the size of the cyst. GSL eggs are larger than SF strains or those darker eggs from Asia. In fact I keep some SF brand eggs as a first food for Marine fry as Instar I and II is supposedly smaller

Thanks for letting me know there are different sized egg casings. I will have to take a look at what type I have. The brand is OSI. I have no idea where they come from. Ironically one of the hatcheries I bought is from San Francisco Bay Brand and it came with 3 packs of eggs. Those have a good hatch rate but if I remember correctly I don't think I was able to find their brand of eggs being sold separately on Amazon (Canada) which is how I ended up with the OSI. I will have to check again. I think what I was seeing in the bowl were the hatched egg casings (or maybe unhatched eggs) and they were tiny. Is there a good way to tell hatched egg casings vs unhatched? Do the unhatched sink and hatched float? I haven't been able to figure this out so I have been tossing them back into the hatchery in case they're unhatched.

As for the pods. I tried culturing apex pods which I heard were the easiest. No-go for me. Having said that maybe they did but they're so tiny I need a magnifying glass and I was trying to culture them in a blue bucket. I might try again with a white bucket. I have not tried the tiggers (yet). I only bought them to feed. I was hoping they would populate in my tank but I think they lasted a day before every last one was consumed by my gobies. Haha. I haven't bought tisbe yet but that's the next one to try and I'm also going to try culturing them. I think I spend more time maintaining the live food cultures than I do my tank. Haha.

 

[Doctorgori]

I’m pretty sure OSI is GSL, that’s what I have.
Yes you can usually tell hatched vs i hatched by color, although some eggs from Asia (from Amazon) are darker, no clue why
…there is a chart somewhere on the web showing various brine shrimp sizes from around the world. Usually they are from the bay, Utah or China

 

[Karen00]

I’m pretty sure OSI is GSL, that’s what I have.
Yes you can usually tell hatched vs i hatched by color, although some eggs from Asia (from Amazon) are darker, no clue why
…there is a chart somewhere on the web showing various brine shrimp sizes from around the world. Usually they are from the bay, Utah or China

Thanks. I will try to find that chart because I had no idea there were different types although thinking about it now, why wouldn't there be different types from different places. I guess I thought they all came from Utah. Haha.