How to hatch and grow brine shrimp

[Ben]

The 1st picture is a simple design for hatching the brine shrimp.
This took less than 2 minutes to put together!

The second picture is of the 2 tanks i have set up to get them started in.
They are just standard 2 foot tanks. As the shrimp grow i will transfer them to a large drum.

I have a heater on the tank set at 28.c.

[goldenpigeon]

hi Ben,
can u tell us about that box in the first pic? where did u buy it from. is it a kit to grow them to adullts?

[Ben]

Good question Junior!

I bought that from a sponsor here
http://www.aquariumproducts.com.au/prod723.htm

basically the brine shrimp eggs/cysts have been decapsulated, meaning the shell has been removed.

This mean when they hatch they hatch out of nonthing, so there are no empty shells to remove.
they can also be fed directly to baby fish, but personally i would recommend hatching first then feeding.

I have tried decapsulating the eggs my self, but found it a bit messy and tricky. As the timing has to be almost perfect.

last summer i grew some brine shrimp to adult size, its quite fun and make great food for discus and other freshwater fish.

I thought i would start it again and show everyone how easy it is to do!

the initial set up costs a little bit but once all the equipment is bought it works out quite cheap!
Specially when a serve of brine shrimp cost around $3.50

Andrew Soh's book, Discus, the naked truth has a great chapter on how to do it!

Cheers,
Ben

[Ben]

2 days after these guys have hatched i have feed them thier first meal.
You can see the colour of the water is slightly green from the spiralina.

I will add more Spiralina as they grow.

[Ben]

I have been feeding my fry frozen baby brine shrimp but thought i would give them a little treat of the live stuff!

The picture below is a brine shrimp net.
This makes it easy to catch and rinse them before feeding.

[Ben]

happy little fry....

[Ben]

Another picture of the tanks.

[Ben]

A picture of the teenage brineshrimp.
they are 10 days old.

They could now be fed to adult discus, but i have been treating some babies and agassizi's to them...

[Ben]

19 days later.....

these guys are adults now and are even giving birth to thier own napauli's!

Cheers,
Ben

[lesley]

Hi Ben,

do you continue to mix the spirulina with boiling water, even when they are grown?

thanks