growing brine shrimp...

[burning2nd]

how do i grow them after they have hatched....

2 1/2 gall tank full of salt water. lamp for heat small air stone,
time?

or is there some other way...

 

[DonW]

Gut load them as soon as they hatch then feed them to your fish. The bigger they are the less nutrients they provide.

Don

 

[returnofsid]

Don's right. BS lose most of their nutrition within 24 hours of hatching. It is possible to grow them larger and retain some of their nutrition by feeding them properly. If I remember right, they need LOTS of turbulence and a very high salinity level...hence the name "Brine." I used to hatch them for feeding my FW cichlids when spawning and grew BS larger for the larger cichlids...however, I don't remember the exact salinity levels they appreciate. Unfortunately, they aren't a very nutritious way to feed our tanks.

 

[Paul B]

To answer your question you need to feed them and feed them continousely. I have raised them many times to feed growing seahorses. I used a ten gallon tank where I would put the baby shrimp. Feed them regular Brewers yeast like you would bake bread with. Just add enough to slightly cloud the tank. If you add too much you will foul the water. The shrimp should clear the water in a day and you add more yeast. They take a few weeks to get to full size.
Good luck.
Paul

 

[rayjay]

I'm a little late getting on the boards lately so this is not too timely a response. However, I have been raising brine shrimp to adult for many years and presently have approx. 225 gallons culturing brine shrimp, and a lot of gallons of green water culturing to feed them with.
Green water (like nanochloropsis for instance) produces the best yields but I only use it for the first 2 to 2 1/2 weeks before switching over to Tahitian Blend cryopaste from Brine Shrimp Direct. The cryopaste hastens the growth to adult faster than the small sized nanochloropsis does and has better nutrient values because it is a blend of different algae.
I like to use ground up pure spirulina to gut load brine before feeding them to the intended target.
Speaking of nutrition, it is a misconception that brine shrimp have no nutrient value and this misconception has been passed on from person to person all too long now.
Brine shrimp grown from cysts from Great Salt Lake have protein levels in the mid 50's approaching 60% with wild caught ones slightly better.
On hatching, brine shrimp nauplii have lower protein and very high fatty acids, but as they grow, the pattern changes to higher protein levels and lower fatty acids.
DON'T BE MISLEAD by percentage protein marked on packages of frozen brine shrimp as those values are based on the TOTAL contents including brine moisture and packaging fluids. (like adding flake food to the tank, it instantly soaks up water so that now, if you take protein based on wet weight, the levels will be very low)
For the best information available on brine shrimp (artemia) see the article on the United Nations site of live foods for aquaculture where the artemia article has been provided by the specialists at the Artemia Reference Centre at the University of Gent. While is has more information than most will have an interest in, you can see their results for nutrient values for brine shrimp.
CLICK HERE AND SCROLL DOWN TO SECTION 4.0

If you have an interest in how I started out with raising brine see my site.
RAISING BRINE SHRIMP TO ADULT

 

[burning2nd]

ok Im gonna ask for that in english....lol i dont understand like half of that... let me finish reading and read a few more times......

pure spirulina
whats that how do you feed it to them?

i just wanna grow a small amount on the weekends to give my fish for treats..... they like it... im not really worryed about nutrents since they eat well as it is allready... but thank you

ill get some pictures of my small opperation soon..

its the old soda bottel trick and then after i hatch them i put them in a 2.5 g tank with a air stone and a 75watt light bulb about a foot away to matain some temp

 

[rayjay]

Spirulina is algae, with excellent nutrient and probiotic qualities, and we normally see it in flake form either as a part of a flake mix or sold as spirulina with other content as well. However, pure, (or in actual figures, near pure) spirulina is just that,spirulina with no other fill product.
It comes in powder form as well as flake form and possibly other forms that I haven't come across personally, sold for us in health food stores and for our fish in pet stores.
Flake form is most economical in my experience and it's easy to crush up into a fine powder.
I use a piece of dense jersey type cloth, place a pile of crushed spirulina in the centre of the cloth, and fold up the edges, twisting the contained spirulina so that it forms a "ball" of spirulina within the cloth. (pic on my brine shrimp page)
I soak the ball overnight in the fridge using a mug of salt water.
The next day I massage the ball in the brine shrimp water to "fog" the water with the spirulina forced through the cloth by the massaging.
Because brine will eat anything appropriately sized that they can capture from the water, many foods can be used to raise them.
In my experience, the green water feeding means less work than any other way because it doesn't foul the water like the "dead" foods do, requiring frequent water changes and container cleaning.
The amount of work is directly related to the density of the brine shrimp culture so I always look for the simplest method for the numbers I wish to harvest each week so I wish I had tried green water many years ago when I was growing only for my own needs.