cultivating brine shrimp for reef aquarium

[drew_the_shmoo]

Hi all,
My partner's 11year old boy wants a little project to cultivate brine shrimp to feed my reef tank. Is this quite straightforward? What would he need to keep them alive?

 

[Oceangirl]

Well, I think most info you'll find will be raising and feeding to fish. They might need a brackish to saltwater to live. I have never personally hatched them. out try googling sea monkeys. very similar

 

[Gregcoyote]

It's easy and a great project for a kid.

There are several YouTube links using 1 liter soda bottles. Hatching is easy, raising is more difficult as you have to start a culture of green water and a rotifer colony as food for the babies.

 

[MikeYQM]

Sea Monkeys!

They're very easy to hatch & grow out. Grab some cysts $5, a 2L pop bottle and a small air pump & you're good to go. Follow the instructions on the package to hatch them then after 2 days transfer to a small tote or something. You can feed Phyto, yeast, a bunch of stuff really. They are hard to kill to. I left a batch without airstone or food for about 2 months & they were still swimming.

 

[Gregcoyote]

I didn't go that route. I bought brine shrimp eggs really cheap. When we had our freshwater hatchery, we bought the eggs in a 1 gallon coffee can. that was a lot of brine shrimp. We fed baby brine to our angelfish babies. If you are feeding them to adult fish, you want to feed them and beef their nutrient value up. I never used yeast or the other stuff mentioned, but if it worked it worked.

http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum/showthread.php/48459-Raising-baby-brine-shrimps

 

[MikeYQM]

I could be wrong, but my understanding was that during the first 24-48 hours after hatching, the nauplii were still consuming their yolk sacs and are of the highest nutritional value. Beyond that time when the yolk sac is gone and they start feeding, they are only as healthy as what you feed them.

I'm not sure of exact nutritional values, but I'm sure phytoplankton is one of the best foods for beyond the 48 hour mark. I know yeast works, but they will take any food small enough. Spiriluna powder would be fantastic as well, but slight more expensive.

The key to "enriching" them is to control their feeding cycle with a light (they only feed in the day) or a cover. Light quality isn't imperative to the shrimp so adding light or blocking makes no difference. A few hours before you want to feed them to your fish, you would add light & feed the shrimp whatever food you choose. As far as I know, enriching should be done within 4-6 hours of feeding otherwise the shrimp will digest all the good stuff you have them.

What you use to feed the shrimp to keep them alive is less important than what you feed them to enrich them.