# What to do after brine shrimp hatched?



## FONE (May 21, 2013)

Hey guys,

I did some digging on DIY brine shrimp hatcheries, and went with the inverted pop bottle technique. After 24-36 hours, I've got a bunch of hatched [baby] brine shrimp.

Now what do I do with them, to make sure they don't all just die off??

I've moved a portion solution + brine shrimp to a small 1.5g tank, and added in more buffered hatching solution with an airline-straw combo.

Do I need to do something to make sure any unhatched eggs in there still hatch, and that the baby brine shrimp can grow and produce new eggs/babies?

Please help! Thanks.


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## BillD (Jun 5, 2006)

Normally brine shrimp are hatched and fed as soon as possible. I have accidently raised a few. If I remember correctly the the salinity should be higher than for hatching. If you do a search you should be able to find a recipe for food. There was a guy who used to be local, who raised them in the backyard in wading pools.


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## bluegularis (May 12, 2010)

*BS growing*

Once the BS hatch usually it is best to feed them to all the fish.

Raising the shrimp to adult hood is not the easiest task it can be done but it is cheaper to just buy them at big Als and you get more of them.

First the salinity has to be increased to 1.04 from 1.025. they need algae or yeast as food from day 2 on , and it take about 3 weeks before they are full grown, at this point they produce new shrimp from eggs that hatch and take the same time to grow again.

I did it once from the shrimp that remained in the hatchers and after 3 weeks got less than a teaspoon to feed to my fish. They also need a large container and aeration I did it in a 10 gallon tank, sea salt mixes are better than just pickling or feed grade salt.

Thank

John


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## rayjay (Sep 6, 2014)

It all depends on what you are looking to accomplish with the brine shrimp.
Is it for fry, or is it just to watch fish chase down live food?
It's always best to enrich the brine before using them as food, no matter what size they are. They naturally have decent protein levels but that's about it without enriching them.
I use 2L pop bottle hatchers/enrichers and after hatching, I remove the air and let stand for 5 minutes to allow unhatched cysts to go to bottom and hatched ones to float. Then I siphon from the bottom, all hatched nauplii and unhatched cysts, leaving the floating empty cysts to be washed out of the container before dumping the siphoned mixture back. 
Then let sit again for about 3 to 4 minutes and siphon all the live nauplii but leaving the unhatched cysts behind.
Pour the live nauplii through a mesh to capture, and rinse under the cold water tap before placing in an enrichment container or feeding them to the fish/fry.
They can't be enriched for a day after hatch out because their digestive tract is not complete until they molt to the second instar stage. Then enrich for two 12 hour stages with new water and enrichment for each stage to minimize deaths due to bacteria build up that occurs VERY quickly with enrichment in the culture water.
Growing to larger sizes depends on the density of the culture and what your needs are. Low density cultures will work in a tank buy it's quite hard to accomplish high density culturing in a tank as circulation is not sufficient to keep food in suspension. (and they do need a lot of food, much more than one would think)
I grow mine out in 26g Rubbermaid garbage containers that are placed on a slant with the open ended air line at the low point to try to keep as much food in suspension as possible.
For smaller needs, inverted 5g water bottles with the bottoms cut out work pretty good.
My article on raising brine shrimp is old now but I don't think I'm doing it any different than when I last updated the page some years back.
*Raising Brine Shrimp to Adult*
You could just modify to suit your needs as I doubt you will need what I grow.
Brine shrimp can live in a wider range of salinities than anything else but it's probably best to use the s.g. of the water you will end up using them in.
I use 1.018 because that's what I raise the seahorse fry at.
I've never got them to adult in 3 or 4 weeks at the density I work with, and when they do reach adult, and assuming your conditions are reasonable and the salinity isn't a way higher than it would be for a reef, they produce live born, not cysts.
Cysts are produced when the salinity gets too high so that they can reproduce once salinity returns to normal again.


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## rayjay (Sep 6, 2014)

Should have mentioned also that the most economical salt mixture is to use 10 parts water softener sodium chloride mixed with 1 part epsom salts and add a bit of baking soda to buffer the water.


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## TBemba (Jan 11, 2010)

I personally found hatching brine shrimp to be a PITA.

I would use decapsulated (non-hatching) brine shrimp

http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/c1/c2/Decapsulated-Non-HatchingBrine-Shrimp-Eggs-c21.html

Or gets some golden pearls.

http://www.johnsfishfood.com/SPECIALTYFOODS.html

John AKA Sugerglider has then for sale.


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