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Brine Shrimp - Artemia |
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I wasn't planning on doing a page on Brine Shrimp because there was already so much stuff out there on the topic. Besides that, I knew this was going to be a long topic to put together and I was actually quite dreading it. However, one visitor to this website expressed disappointment because I "neglected to include the foundational topic relating to fish breeding." On top of that, I have found that some "common knowledge" is not quite so accurate and needs to be clarified. So alrite... I give in.....here you go.... Brine Shrimp. IntroBrine shrimp (Artemia Salina) are basically little ittiy bitty crustaceans that live in salty water. Many of us know them from from our youth as Sea Monkeys from Toys R Us. They sell you a plastic tank with a packet of "Mystery Powder" which, if you simply add water, will suddenly spring to life in 24 hrs. Seamonkys have developed quite a following. Don't believe me?... check this out www.seamonkeyworship.com. Brine shrimp are really neat creatures. Some naturally live in salty ponds & lakes that experience wet and dry seasons. When the rainy season arrives, the rain fills up the pond / lake and re-hydrates the eggs which hatch into brine shrimp. While the pond is still full, brine shrimp will reproduce like crazy, giving birth to live young. But at the end of the season when the rain stops, evaporating water in the lakes causes salinity to increase. This, together with other environmental triggers causes the brine shrimp to stop producing live young but produce eggs instead. Due to increased salinity and / or total drying up of the pond, the eggs dehydrate and the embryo inside it goes into a kind of suspended dormancy. Kinda like Han Solo being encased in carbonite. Alive... but not quite. The eggs stay dried like that until the next rains arrive which trigger hatching and the life cycle repeats all over again. But enough of that... If you are here at my website, then it is safe to say that you have other plans for your Seamonkys.... FOOD! Brine Shrimp are (almost) at the bottom of the food chain. They have been used in aquaria as an occasional meal for adult fish, but most importantly they are used extensively for raising of fry of both marine and freshwater fish. In the case of Dwarf Seahorses, they are used as their sole source of food. One cannot stress the importance of Brine Shrimp in the aquarium hobby. I believe they are here to stay and that every serious breeder should get familiar with this superfood. Adult Brine ShrimpAdult brine shrimp typically grow to about 1/2 inch in total length and are readily available live from most good LFSs. Their swimming and wiggling movement naturally triggers a predatory response from most fish, which makes them excellent food for finicky fish or fish that have gone off their feed. I use them with great success when weaning wild caught fish onto frozen foods. I also use them as an occasional treat for my seahorses who get "bored" of frozen mysis all the time. Live brine tends to stimulate their predatory response and keeps them interested in food that falls down across their faces. Nutrition... Or Lack Of It..... : It is important to note that adult brine shrimp are very much lacking in nutrition. I liken it to eating celery for a whole year. Sure its big and fills you up, but you don't get all the vitamins, fat and all the nutrition you need to be healthy. Hence I believe that adult brine shrimp should never be used as a staple food for anything. Even when feeding adult brine, it is important to fortify them by gut loading them first before feeding. Gut loading at least replenishes some of the nutrients that are inherently deficient in adult brine shrimp. Buying & Feeding : When purchasing adult brine shrimp from the LFS, as with any other live food, you want to make sure you minimize the chance of disease by being smart when shopping. The main thing to look for when purchasing adult brine shrimp is to make sure that they are alive (DUH!!!!). But seriously, some places already pre-package the shrimp into clear poly bags which you can obviously look at and tell if they are alive or dead. But some other places keep their brine shrimp in a large holding tank with an airstone that agitates the water so that you can't easily tell dead shrimp from live ones. After they scoop and bag the shrimp (and before you pay), make sure you look carefully at the bag to make sure that majority of the shrimp are alive and kicking. A few dead ones are okay, but if you have a bunch of sinkers that sit motionless at the bottom of the bag, I highly suggest you let the store know that you disapprove. When feeding gut load & fortify if at all possible. Never ever pour the nasty salty water from the bag directly into your tank. Always pour through a net to drain away the water. You may want to give the netted shrimp a rinse with clean water before feeding them to your fish. If you are not using them immediately and want to save some for later, you may store them in a container / jar / small tank / basin in dechlorinated saltwater mixed up to a S.G. of 1.017 - 1.024 or so (same as marine phytoplankton) . See culturing instructions if you want to keep them alive for an extended period of time. Baby Brine ShrimpWhile Adult Brine Shrimp are good for an occasional treat, Baby Brine Shrimp (BBS) on the other hand are the staple foods if you want to raise 90% of fish fry out there. Newly hatched BBS are jam packed with nutrition which will allow your fry to grow up fast. Their small size makes them perfect first foods for many species of fish fry. Notoriously small fry such as B. Splendens, H. Reidi some Clownfish may need to be first fed smaller foods such as vinegar eels and rotifers, but usually after a week or two they will be large enough to eat BBS. Purchasing & Storage : When purchasing eggs, you will be able to find them quite readily from the big box pet stores and many good LFS. Most of the time you will find that if you buy from a retail store, they are only available in itty bitty vials which is good for at most one or two spawns... sometimes hardly enough for even a single large spawn. If your critters like mine, breed fairly regularly, then you will want to to with the large 15 or 16 oz can. Store them in the freezer and they'll keep pretty much forever. Better still, if you have one of those vacuum seal cans (the ones with a little valve on top which allows you to suck out the air after putting the top on), you can store your eggs in that, stuck out the air and stick it in your freezer. Only scoop out enough eggs that you can hatch or decapsulate at one go. Quick Note On % Hatch Rates: I have noticed while shopping online that there is quite a great difference in prices between 95% hatch rate eggs and say the 80% hatch rate eggs. I personally have not conducted any significant experiments to determine the validity of these hatch rate claims, but I have personally used the eggs of all sorts of different % hatch rates and have not noticed any SIGNIFICANT difference in usage, quality or results. It is always the case (and good practice i might add) to always prepare more BBS than required for each feeding. If the fish don't finish eating, then just siphon the remainder out. You cannot always be that accurate as to scoop the exact same amount of BBS eggs each time you hatch them out. Amounts always differ and it makes little difference if 95% or 80% of the eggs hatch, you always have more than what your fry can eat. Also if like me, you have the habit of decapsulating your eggs before hatching, then this difference is pretty much irrelevant. Fry from decapsulated eggs get eaten and the decapsulated eggs themselves will also get eaten... no need to worry about hatch rates. Which is another reason why everyone should decapsulate their eggs. Hence, unless you are a perfectionist, and you must account for every single BBS, for most of us, it really doesn't matter what hatch rate your brine shrimp eggs produce. IMO, just go for the cheapest one. Hatchers : You'll see people selling all sorts of BBS hatchers on the market. Some work great, and some are just crap! The one that I am going to strongly advise you to STAY AWAY from is the one that is being sold in many big box pet stores which looks like a little black cube with a transparent vial sticking out the top Clicky HERE for Pics. There is a reason why they have been forced to adopt a new label "Educational Brine Shrimp Kit". The hatch rates from these things are absolutely terrible and really a big waste of money if you have hundreds of hungry mouths to feed. Perfect however if you want to raise sea monkeys for fun. IMO, the best hatchers involve a transparent 2 Liter soda bottle or some sort of cone. Some places sell kits which require you to supply your own 2L bottle and those are good to have. But if you want to save some money, you can totally make a pretty good one for yourself. Of all the hatchers that I have used, the best ones that I still currently use on a regular basis are my home made ones. Here's a separate DIY page for the 2L soda bottle brine shrimp hatcher. Hatching + Harvesting: To make things simple for everyone, it suffices to say that all you need to do is to mix up 1 quart of water with 1 to 2 tablespoons (I'd say go with 1.5 tbs) of salt (table or marine...doesn't matter).
If you really want to get fancy with your mixing, then mix up saltwater to a S.G. of anywhere between 1.015 to 1.022. Hook up your hatcher to an air pump and combine the saltwater solution with brine shrimp eggs (decapsulated or not doesn't matter). Leave it to bubble overnight at a comfortable room temperature (comfortable for you!) and the eggs should hatch and be ready for harvest about 24 hrs later or as early as 16hrs for decapsulated eggs. If your eggs are decapsulated, then just pour as much as you need through a brine shrimp net and feed directly to the fry. If decapsulated, it is okay if fry eat the eggs. The decapsulation process removes the hard outer casing of the eggs which pretty much allows the entire egg to be eaten without ill effects. If your eggs are not decapsulated, then you'll have to turn off the air pump and allow the empty egg shells to float to the surface of the water. Some people skim the shells off to remove them but i don't bother, there's a simpler way to harvest them. Since BBS are attracted to light, place a light source below the hatcher and they will all migrate down towards the light and away from the shells. You can now suck them out from the bottom if your airline tube doubles as a harvesting tube, or siphon them out from the top using an airline tube. Pass the water through a brine shrimp net. If feeding to freshwater fish, pour some freshwater through the net to wash away some of the salt before feeding. If feeding marine critters, then no need to rinse. You may go ahead and swish the net directly in the fry tank. No Salt Hatching: I recently came across a post by PhishPhreak on my favorite local fish forum about hatching BBS without salt. I have yet to try it, but feel free to do so an let me know how it turns out.
DecapsulatingDecapsulating simply means to remove the shell from the cysts. This article is starting to get forever long, so I think i'll save this section for a page by itself. Read more on How To Decapsulate Brine Shrimp Cysts. Gut LoadingAs alluded to earlier, adult brine shrimp and even 24hr old (instar II) baby brine shrimp are quite nutritionally deficient. If your fish are fed straight up adult brine shrimp exclusively and nothing else, they will die of malnutrition. Hence it is important to supplement the brine shrimp with something else more nutritionally suitable for life. That is why feed your fish with a variety of foods while only feeding brine shrimp as an occasional treat. However, in many cases i have to admit that the above is simply not possible. This is usually the case when purchasing wild caught fish that have yet to be weaned off wild foods, or when your fish (for various reasons) go off their feed and refuse to eat processed foods, or when transitioning fry from BBS to larger foods. Whatever the case, it turns out that brine shrimp is all that your fish will eat and you have no choice but to feed them that. One (partial) solution is to boost the nutrition of the brine shrimp before feeding your fish. As it turns out, Brine shrimp are indescriminate filter feeders which makes them very suitable for gut loading before feeding. Basically the concept is that you feed the brine shimp super nutritious food until their "GUTS" are "LOADED" full of nutritional goodness. These gut loaded shrimp are then fed to your fish before they have a chance to poop away all that they have been gut loaded with. Besides gut loading with food, you can gut load with medicines. A lot of aquarium meds nowadays come in pill or powder form. You can gut load your brine shimp with these and then QUICKLY feed your fish with them. Emphasis on the 'QUICKLY' because chances are if you wait too long, your brine shrimp will probably have OD'd on meds and are on their way to happyland. Gut loading is easy. You may gut load with pretty much anything that is small and particulate in nature which is easily suspended in the water column. All that means is that it has the consistency of flour, which is made out of many tiny small particles that when mixed into water, doesn't immediately settle. This suspension is key to gut loading because brine shrimp pretty much swim aimlessly in the water column, continuously gathering up bits of food with its legs and transfering the food to thier mouths. Hence the more stuff there is suspended in the water, the faster they will eat and the quicker you will be able to complete gut loading them. When you notice that their digestive tract is full of whatever you are trying to gut load, its time to feed your fish. So what should you gut load with? The simplest and most available things to use are your normal pet store brand fish flake or pelletized granules. You need to grind these up into a very (VERY!!) fine powder which you can then use to gut load your brine shrimp. I have found that the best way to achieve this is to go out to your local pharmacy (or better ASIAN pharmacy) and pick up a little mini motar and pestle. It is a small investment that goes a long way. I find that with these, you can get more of the flake / granules much smaller than blenders or food processors can. Besides, they are a snap to clean and you don't have to worry about having fish food in your people food kitchen appliance. There are also plenty of speciality products out in the market which are perfect for gut loading. Here's a partial list : Spirulina Powder, boiled egg yolk, Natu-Rose (astaxanthin), Phytoplankton (Microalgae), Algamac, Vitachem*, Selcon* to name a few. Each product has its specific uses, so do your research to find out which product best suits your purpose. * Here's a note on gut loading with a liquid suppliment or liquid medication. Although brine shrimp are capable of liquid suppliment uptake, they are not very efficient. Liquids seem to pass through them quicker than solids. This means that if it takes a while for your fish to eat them, they will have passed the liquids or have the liquids washed away from thier bodies. I have discovered a better way. Soak some powdered fish food (described above) in the liquid suppliment and allow 15 min for the fish food to soak up the liquid suppliment. Then feed this to the brine shirmp. They will eat the fish food + liquids and can then be fed to the fish. CulturingIMHO, unless you are doing it for fun, trying to culture brine shrimp to get enough brine shrimp to feed your fish is a futile effort. With adult brine shrimp so cheap and plentiful, it is wayyyyyyy simpler to just make that 60 mile trip to your LFS to pick up a bag than try to culture them yourselves. But as always... i aim to please... so since somebody asked... here it is.... Brine shrimp are quite tolerant of water quality, temperature fluctuations, water chemistry etc. Which makes them pretty easy to culture. The only thing is that they reproduce slowly (compared to other kinds of cultures), eat lots and poop continuously. This means constant feeding and constant waterchanges (with saltwater) to keep water quality up. Method #1 - SIMPLE This method is pretty much the most basic setup that you can have. You will need :
Simply fill your aquarium with dechlorinated saltwater, hook up the air pump to the airline tubing (or optional rigid tubing) and allow to bubble directly into the aquarium. Adjust the air pump so that there is enough agitation in the water to created a good flow over the entire aquarium. Do NOT use an airstone because the small bubbles created by the airstone can get lodged in an adult's legs and may prevent them from swimming or eating normally. Keep the temperature around room temperature. If it is comfortable for you, it should be okay for the brine shrimp. Do not install a filter in the tank. Even the weakest filter will be able to suck up little baby brine shrimp, never to be found again. Seed your tank either with adults from the LFS or hatch your own babies (following the instructions above). Feed everyday enough to keep the water slightly cloudy. Every couple of days, vaccumn the bottom of the tank bottom with a rigid airline tubing to get rid of all the gunk. Replace removed water with clean saltwater. If done correctly and the brine shrimp are happy, they should give birth to live babies and you should have a nice culture in no time. When the culture gets so dense that they can't swim around without bumping into one another, it is time to harvest to thin out the culture. Method #2 - ADVANCED I actually prefer this method more than the simple method. Even though it is more labor intensive because you need to culture live phytoplankton. But in fact, the actual culturing of the brine shrimp is pretty simple because it kinda takes care of itself. Here's what you need:
If you are already culturing phytoplankton (microalgae) then the hard stuff is already done. Set up your aquarium as before, fill it halfway with prepared saltwater and have your airline tubing bubbling directly into the water (without airstone). This time set up the lighting on top of or beside the tank so that it shines directly into the tank from above or from the side. Set up your electrical timer so that you have 16 hrs on and 8 hrs off. Fill the remainder of the tank with your mature phytoplankton culture and seed the culture with brine shrimp. THAT'S IT!!.... THAT'S IT??.... No feeding?? No Water Changes???... well.. okay... MINIMAL feeding and MINIMAL water changes as compared to method 1. Here's how it works.... 1. Lighting 16hrs on / 8 hrs off provides energy for photosynthesis. 2. The phytoplankton in the tank photosynthesizes the light and uses the nutrients from the waste products from the brine shimp. 3. Brine shrimp eat phytoplankton, grow, reproduce & produce baby brine shrimp... they also poop... which provides nutrients for the phytoplankton to thrive And so the cycle continues......... This process is somewhat self sustaining. But be careful to keep checking on it. When the brine shrimp population explodes, there will not be enough phytoplankton to feed them (the tank becomes clear), which means you have to pour in a new batch of newly brewed phytoplankton. Be on the lookout for evaporation. Keep the tank topped up with DISTILLED or RO water. Do not use saltwater to top up evaporation loss. This will cause the water to become saltier and saltier over time & may kill everything. Every 2 weeks, i reccomend giving it a 48 hr total blackout where the lights are completely off. This allows the brine shirmp to deplete the phytoplankton in the water column enough for you to see through the tank and vacumn all the gunk that will settle at the bottom of the tank. Then top up with a new batch of phytoplankton. As before, remember to harvest when the population explodes in order to avoid overcrowding. Plug
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