How To hatch Brine Shrimp(the right way)

[Jayv]

Can anyone help me with Brine Shrimp? I have tried many times to hatch my own brine Shrimp. Failure, Failure, Failure! They hatch and die. How to keep them alive, and how to grow them for use in my recipe's?
Thank You
Jamie

[Jason]

a saltwater or reef board may be a better source for that info.

must discus keepers dont keep the shrimp alive for more than a day.

IMHO it be much less hassle and work just to buy the size you need frozen.

[Discusgeo]

Here is how I hatch mine and the directions I send out with each can of Eggs I sell. I do feed my B.S so they last about 5 days before I get them all fed to my Discus and Angels. I alternate the foods between the Brine Shrimp with Golden Pearls.


The optimal conditions for hatching artemia are as follows - 25 degrees C, salinity - 5 ppt (1.030 density), heavy continuous aeration, light - 2000 lux constant illumination, pH around 8. Good circulation is essential to keep the cysts in suspension. A container that is V shaped is best (two liter bottles work good, the absolute best I've found are separation columns found in any lab supply - they're expensive though). glue a valve on the cap and invert, this way unhatched cysts, empty shells, and hatched nauplii can be easily removed separately.

Another idea I would highly recommend checking out was offered by Ken Cunningham (kfc@wimsey.com). His discovery was to use pilsner beer glasses, Some of them have a conical point at the bottom, these are the ones to look for. Ken places three or four in a ten gallon tank and heats them by the water bath method. Put rigid air lines in the glasses with no air stones, connected by flexible tubing to the distribution manifold. 80 degrees, bright light at all times. In each glass put 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1/2 or 1/4 teaspoon of cysts, and bubble for 24 hours. To harvest, leave the rigid tubing in the glass, but lift it out of the aquarium and disconnect the flexible air tube at the manifold. Let the glass settle in relative darkness (i.e. not bright light) for 10 minutes, and siphon the artemia out using the airline tubing into fresh water to rinse. By using the glasses on a rotation, its possible to have hatched artemia available at all times.

Still another good idea comes from Wright Huntley (huntley@ix.netcom.com) who originally got the idea from Oleg Kiselev. Wright now uses Chianti wine bottles found at Trader Joes for 4 bucks. By tilting the bottles on edge and using the same salt and cyst ratio as Ken, quite high hatch rates are being obtained. harvesting is the same, by siphoning using the air tubing, but into a funnel lined with a handkerchief, then the artemia may be rinsed if desired, and fed. There are many methods in use for hatching these guys. Once you play with whatever particular method you chose to achieve optimum performance, your results will probably be just as good as any other hatching method. Don't be afraid to experiment.

The hatching percentage and density are usually a function of water quality, circulation and origin of the cysts. Containers with flat bottoms have dead areas in the corners and are not ideal for maximum hatch rates. It doesn't take a lot of cysts to get going, there are usually 200,000 to 300,000 nauplii per gram of cysts, so a half teaspoon in a two liter bottle is more than enough for the typical aquarist. With a setup of two or more bottles, one started one day, the other the next, you can have a continuous supply of newly hatched artemia for your tank every day. This is the method we used when I worked at Scripps Aquarium - only with 5 gallon water bottles.