Feeding Fry Baby Brine Shrimp Questions

[bs6749]

I am about to have quite a few GBR eggs hatch if I am lucky. (I need to move them from my 55 gallon tank to a 10 that is being set up at the moment.) I have a few questions about feeding them baby brine shrimp though as I have never done this before.

I stopped at Petsmart today and I picked up some San Francisco Bay brand brine shrimp eggs. I was just curious as to how these baby brine shrimp have worked out for others that have used them. I was wondering how fast the BBS will grow and if they will be too large for the fry to eat after a day or so. Do I need to make a new batch of BBS every day? Two days? More? I am lost on this and I could use some expert advice.

How often should I introduce new BBS into the fry tank and how much at a time? Should I do water changes in the fry tank and should I rinse the BBS before feeding them to the fry? I just filled the tank with distilled water so I should have very little in the way of ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, and TDS. Don't worry I have a seeded sponge filter in the tank so I am all set there. I was just wondering if the salt from the BBS water would eventually contaminate the fry tank. I think I remember hearing someone say that it is okay to dump the BBS w/water into the fry tank, just minimize the amount of water put in at each feeding. Any and all help is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

 

[BillD]

if you want the fry to grow quickly, they should be fed at least 3 or 4 times a day, as much as they can eat in about 15 minutes. The fry should have noticeably pink bellies and look like they will burst. The brine shrimp need to be hatched daily, as they should be fed while they still have their yolk sac. Their food value deteriorates quickly after the sack is gone. A rinse is beneficial, and no you shouldn't add the salt water. The San Fran BBS are smaller than the Utah ones, so, are a better choice for small fry. Are the eggs being hatched in distilled water? If not, moving fry to a lower TDS might prove fatal.

 

[bs6749]

The tank that I had the eggs in was almost exclusively filled with RO water after I did a move back in February. Only the water that the fish were kept in during the move was not completely RO water but it was extremely soft. I am talking 25ppm or even less.

I have been doing some searching around about the BBS and have found that there are 2 or more strains as you have suggested and indeed the San Francisco Bay brand would be the better choice for me as they are smaller. I have looked on several different people's sites and on one it claims that the BBS can be hatched in water with NO coarse salt (just baking soda to raise the pH) as long as the pH is at least 8.0, which seems to be the greatest factor in hatching them. I think I am going to do a trial run without the salt just to see how it works.

Here is the kicker...the eggs should hatch out later on today or sometime early tomorrow. I have to work Thursday-Saturday and I tend to not only work long shifts but weird ones as well. My point is that I don't think that I will be home all that much, so hopefully they still have their yolk sacs and don't need to be fed until Saturday night/early Sunday morning. If it works out that way I think I will be all set as I should be able to feed them the rest of the week, and as often as they need to be fed. But I was wondering, as a WORSE CASE scenario, could I simply feed one larger feeding of the BBS in a single day? Wouldn't the BBS still be alive in the fry tank, even though they would have lost most of their nutritional value after about 8 hours? I have heard that the fry still eat them and they fair pretty well. I have also heard that the BBS that are hatched in water without salt added but the correct pH live longer when introduced into the fry tank simply because there is no osmotic shock as one person described it.

I would like to hear more opinions and experiences with BBS so if any others would like to chime in please do so. Thank you for your help so far BillD.

 

[toddnbecka]

You can use a very fine-mesh net to scoop up bbs w/out adding their water when feeding.
Microworms are also a good food for tiny fry. They live much longer in the water than bbs, so live food is available to the fry longer.

 

[bs6749]

I think that I will attempt to suck up as many BBS as I can with a turkey baster, then I will spray BBS/water mixture into a coffee filter and save/reuse the water. This will allow me to get rid of most of the salt from the BBS hatching jar. Then I will simply dip the coffee filter into the 10 gallon tank to introduce the BBS into the water for the fry.

I have heard about microworms as well as vinegar eels but I am not sure where I could get them. I could order off of aquabid but most likely they won't be here for when I need them and I would much rather just pick them up in an LFS if they had them.

 

[rkilling1]

A BBS net works wonders when feeding BBS to fry. It allows you to easily obtain the BBS and you can rinse them off prior to putting them into the fry tank.

One question for you: Why did you fill the fry tank with straight distilled water? I would be worried about the buffering capacity of the water and having huge Ph swings.

 

[bs6749]

No, my 55 gallon tank water was nearly all RO water (as I stated above) and the pH was 7.0 in that tank. I wanted to put in RO water but none of the pet stores around here have it so I would have to drive ~1.5 hours round trip for it. I settled on distilled water instead. I only put in RO water in my tanks for the most part. I sometimes will add tap water to the main tank but it is added in very small amounts. I'm not worried about pH swings in the tank. I could always add buffers later if it becomes a problem.

 

[BillD]

I would advise against reusing the hatching water, as it will be full of bacteria; more than likely it will smell bad. hatching containers should be well cleaned, and sterilized with a bit of bleach between uses, in my experience. The exception would be with cysts that have been decapsulated using bleach. They have no bacteria, because they have been in a 50% bleach water solution, that dissolves the outer hull. Water used to hatch those can be reused. The unhatched decapsulated cysts can also be fed to the fry. for me it is worth the extra few minutes to decapsulate.

 

[bs6749]

Yeah, I think I will get new water each time just to be safe.

Here is what happened so far. Yesterday I started a batch of BBS by mixing the eggs into a mason jar that I added baking soda to in order to get the pH above 8.0. This morning when I looked there were quite a few BBS in the jar already. I saw a moving cloud at the bottom of the jar and I am sure that more will hatch constantly over the next 6 hours or so. They hatched out in less than 18 hours! I only had a desk lamp on them for heat but I turned that off when I went to bed for the night.

Also, when I looked at 6:00 this morning I saw several wigglers in the GBR fry tank. They were still "jumping" up and down near the spot on the driftwood where the eggs were laid. I have yet to check them since getting home from my first chemistry exam for the day but I bet there are quite a few hatched out now. How long should I wait to feed them the BBS? They still have a yolk sac (obviously) but I have heard that they should be fed before th yolk sac is used up completely. Maybe feed them in 2 days? I am not sure if their mouths are large enough to feed on BBS at the moment. I also just checked and it appears that the wigglers are feeding on the growth coming off of some of the unfertilized eggs. Is this normal and will it harm the fry?