Keeping Brine shrimp

Well I am now about two weeks into my axolotl adventure of raising llarvae, and all is going well. I'd always heard that you had to keep a brine shrimp culture going every other day to keep them fed. But I found out that if after a hatch I sucked out a good majority of the brine shrimp and put them in some more water in tuperware containers, I could feed them to the axies over a period of days. This way I only have to keep one culture going, restarting it every four days or so. Also thought I'd mention that I am feeding them twice a day and that I'm only raising fourteen. Looks like I have one melaniod, four wildtypes and nine leucinistics(spelling?).

Congrats!!!

You will soon be able to move to daphnia and then the hassle of BBS will be over!

haha yeah. I'm finding my method of keeping the brineshrimp is working less and less well every day. It's amazing how much they eat and grow!!!

How many times a day/how much are you feeding them? Is it just as much as they'll take in one sitting?

Sorry, this is a really late response. But yeah, I just give them a ton twice a day and suck out the stuff they dont eat at the end of the day.

I can't seem to keep my BBS alive very long so I'm keeping 2 hatcheries going. Bought a bottle of decapsulated eggs which makes it so so much easier! My little guys are 4 days old and their bellies are orange so I think they're doing ok!
Do you have any photos? Do they have legs yet?

To keep them alive for a while, I suck them out and put them in a container with 6g/L saltwater and put them in the fridge, it slows down their metabolism, and they stay alive for days. It also keeps them nutritious longer as they dont use up as much energy... this is what I do, hope its ok/safe... ofcourse I rinse them through before I would feed to get rid of the salt.

I agree that pipetting newly hached brine shrimp into new water and refridgerating keeps them well. I ended up with one straddler axolotl who refused larger food for ages. If you only want to keep them a day or two the salt concentration is not critical. I found 9g per litre slightly better than 6 or 12 g per litre. There are probably strain differences: I believe the eggs I used were Great Salt lake strain but they were not identified as such by the seller.

In 9g per litre at 4 C Survival is almost 100% at two weeks but then drops rapidly to 50% at 3 weeks and few alive at 4 weeks.

Use a flat bottomed container so they are spread thinly over the bottom. I use a petri dish but a small jam jar will do. They do not move in the cold and if they are in a pellet in the bottom of a curved glass or test tube survival is poorer.

They wake up quickly on warming and can be re pipetted if needed.