Little experiment with raising Brine shrimp(success)

I was always told that raising Brine shrimp to adult hood was too difficult/expensive to consider. After beginning to hatch BS daily I felt bad about all the seawater/leftover brine shrimps going to waste. I decided to do a little experiment. Set up a salad box wih the old hatchwater. Then added in a little bit of greenwater. As the days went by I kept the water level up as needed and added in yeast and also the liquid from defrosting frozen bloodworms. Algae grew along the sides and the shrimp could be observed "grazing" on this. I didn't keep track of the time but right now some of the shrimp are full grown and can be seen mating. Look like good larvae food too.

Has anyone else tried this before? It is said that if the conditions are good(salinity stays relatively low, temps optimum, and food available) that they will livebear nauplii and the culture could become self sustaining.

(Message edited by fishkeeper on July 07, 2005)

The problem with brine shrimp is not that is it hard to raise some to maturity but to rear them in any real quantity consistently on small scale.

I've reared them in 2 liter plastic soda bottles as a kid and it took a lot of effort to feed a small snack to my fish once a month.

The brine shrimp are not grazing on the algae fixed to the sides of the enclosure as they are physicaly unable to scrape and remove the algae (they are filter feeders), what you are seeing is simply the shrimp swimming along the perimiter of a small enclosure.

Ed
Ed

Ed: Interesting to know they are not grazinhg. They seem to be feeding in some way as they will slow down and crawl around in the algae. Perhaps looking for food trapped in it I guess.

They are slow to grow, I'd agree...but the larvae/morphs love them! More enthusiastic response to them than blackworms perhaps due to more movement.

Also...it appears that this will be pretty much self sustaining...noticed lots of brine shrimp nauplii swimming around.

Or there is some friction from the algae that slows the movement of the brine shrimp down.....
They are strictly filter feeders and if it is not suspended in the water column they cannot use it.

Typically very few of the naupli will reach adult size as the food supply in an tank is very limited (unless you are using a flow through culture method and have access to a lot of cultured greenwater).

Ed