chromekilla

my guppies had babies i seperated the mom and she has 14 babies ive been feeding them crushed blood worms and flake food today i got some brine shrimp and i was wondering on how to hatch them?

gm333

Sorry it's very long, but hits all the points when hatching brine shrimp.


Hatching Brine Shrimp

For years, the standard food used in feeding most fish fry has been brine shrimp. The ease of hatching out and feeding brine shrimp garners them an important place in aquaculture. There are plenty of methods available on the Internet, in books and just about anywhere aquaculture is discussed. Of course, there are always better ways, and I'm here to discuss a few tips and suggestions you can use to make the hatching out of brine shrimp simpler for you and more nutritious for your fry.

First, let's take a brief look at what brine shrimp eggs really are.

Calling them eggs is actually a misnomer. They are more accurately cysts, encased in a hard shell. The cysts commonly available are dehydrated and kept in sealed containers. Hatching out these cysts takes no more than some salt water and an air supply.

There are lots of prefabricated containers out there for the purpose of hatching out brine shrimp. All of them should work quite well, though they are often made of plexiglass or acrylic and can be rather costly. Empty, clean soda bottles of varying sizes can be used as a cost-efficient alternative. Two-litre bottles are the preferred size for hatching out a large supply of brine shrimp. I've found these to work excellently with larger spawns, though they may be a bit much for smaller spawns. Twenty-ounce bottles work just as well, and can be used to hatch out a smaller amount more frequently.

The hatching process can take a lot of energy from the newly hatched shrimp. The casings of their cysts are rather thick, and it takes some effort to break free from the case. These cases have also been accused of harbouring bacteria that can be harmful to the shrimp and fry. Decapsulating the shrimp cysts help out in a number of ways.

With the casing nearly gone, the newly hatched shrimp have a higher nutritional content, due to less energy exerted breaking out. Decapsulating the cysts also serves the function of sterilizing the eggs. Decapsulated cysts also tend to hatch out faster, and are thus ready more quickly than cysts with their complete shell intact. Also, with the shells mostly gone, there are few to none to separate from the shrimp themselves. Fry can choke on the indigestible shells, causing needless fry death. Decapsulating the cysts can be done quite easily.

The first step in decapsulating the cysts is to re-hydrate them. The dehydrated cysts look akin to a deflated ball; there are lots of nooks, crannies and folds that can be missed. A lot of water isn't needed for re-hydrating the cysts. Here is the procedure I use.

Using a twenty-ounce soda bottle, I fill it about 1.5 inches from the bottom. To this, I add a teaspoon of brine shrimp cysts. A piece of rigid airline tubing down to the bottom of the bottle will keep the cysts in motion and re-hydrate them more evenly. Re-hydration takes about 1-1.5 hours. Re-hydrating them for any time period longer than two hours can cause the cysts to be damaged by too much water absorption. I find an hour and a half works best. At this point, the cysts are more or less back to a rounded shape.

Keeping the aeration going, I use a dedicated (ie: don't use it for any other purposes) funnel to fill the bottle to about an inch from the top with bleach. The chlorine in the bleach dissolves the shells on the cysts and sanitizes the entire mixture as well. Keep an eye on the cysts from the next few minutes. They will change from brown, to grey, to yellow and then to orange. Once the cysts have mostly turned a bright orange-brown, it is time to dump them out. A special brine shrimp eggs net will be needed here to capture the cysts, as they will go through most other nets.

Run the cysts under the water to clean off most of the bleach for a couple minutes. Using a similar but different bottle, use the funnel to dump the rinsed off eggs into it. I find it helps to have the salt water prepared in the bottle beforehand. If you fill it to about ? of where you want the water line, it makes the next step easier. Then rinse off the net and funnel with some more fresh water, right into the bottle. This should fill the bottle to the point where you want the water line.

At this time, adding some dechlorinator would be helpful to eliminate any traces of bleach left in the water. Add the aeration line now, and let the cysts hatch out. Decapsulated cysts should hatch out in about 12-18 hours.

Encapsulated cysts normally take about 24-36 hours to hatch. Hatching times in both instances are temperature dependant.

There are a lot of suggestions I've read through on the Internet and other places that I've found are not required and haven't seemed to impact the hatch rate in any way.

Often, people will say you need to have a constant light source or a certain temperature for hatching brine shrimp. I've found neither of these to be true, within reason. Temperature extremes should be avoided, but a temperature in the range of 60-85 is fine. Constant light is also definitely not necessary. I keep my hatching setup in the basement, which is in the dark with the rest of the fish room for about 8-10 hours every day.

Brine shrimp grow quickly, and are most nutritious for the firs 6-8 hours after hatching. The shrimp moult every few hours, shedding skin and growing larger. Shrimp that are more than a few hours old are sometimes too large for small fry to eat. It's often helpful to have 3-4 containers hatching out at varying intervals, in order to have a consistent supply of food for your fry.

Gathering the shrimp after hatching can be done in many ways. I use a piece of rigid airline tubing by plugging one end with my finger, placing the tube into the hatching container, and then sucking up the shrimp by quickly removing and then replacing my finger plugging one end. For larger requirements, you can pour the water from the bottle into the brine shrimp net for collection. Rinsing the shrimp under fresh tap water can clean off some of the residue that may collect on them. I don't do this final step, but some people do. Your preference can be followed.

Feeding the newly hatched shrimp right away is the best idea. They quickly lose their nutritional value, most of it after about 12 hours from hatching. After this point, it's a good idea to feed the shrimp. Keep in mind they are filter feeders, and will need tiny particles to ingest. There are many good products on the market that will enrich the shrimp for feeding.

I hope this gets people started on understanding some of the basics of hatching out brine shrimp. There are many variables and different ways this can be done. Find out what works best for you and go from there.

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