brine shrimp
 

Howdy, You dont need decapsulated eggs ,too expensive anyway. If you use the pop bottle method ,when you turn off the air ,the shells float to the top and the shrimp can be drained into a sieve through bottom . It is very easy .It works a treat !! I will try to find a link that shows the set up .............Dave

cool thanks everyone for the advice
if you could find that link it would be great
thanks again
Neal

Hatchery
 

Photo of brine shrimp hatchery.

Article.....................
 

http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/..._Hatchery.html
Howdy ,This link is a complete photo journal, of setting up a simple hatchery.
If the link does notwork for you just google in' Brine shrimp hatchery' and you will get dozens of sites .
This one is in aquarticles .com.....................Dave

day 12 - 11 Nov 06
 

Well, 5 more bodies.
I was finally able to count. 15 left
but at least most of them are looking strong.
still happy with the results
I am going to start another batch of brine shrimp and I will try feeding them tomorrow.
Wish me luck
They are definitely getting bigger. Much easier to see their features now
Neal

Feeding.............
 

Howdy ,Can you seeif they are taking any shrimp ?
...................Dave

i haven't been adding the shrimp yet
tomorrow I am going to try
Neal

If you follow the Talkingreef Podcast, there is a instructional video on brine shrimp. I'm sorry I was't able to find the link!

day 16 - 15 Nov 06
 

I thought things were going smooth a couple of days ago. I had no deaths for that day.
However, there has been a couple of major setbacks yesterday and today.
yesterday, the brine shrimp that I had attempted to hatch didn't hatch so I had no fresh hatched brine shrimp to feed them. I lost 5 yesterday.
And over last night, the airpump vibrated itself off the table and the air hose came out of the bowl.
I lost another 4 this morning.
I now have 2 left.
The good news, the male looks like he is ready to pop again and I think there is going to be alot more this time as he is getting really big.
So, I am going take this as a learning experience and move on with the next batch.

I would say 16 days was a good effort . Make sure you brine shrimp eggs are from a reliable source. You should have no problem hatching them .I used to have two bottles on the go which gave me a continuous supply.
Two teaspoons of sea salt per bottle ,good aeration. I stood the bottles in a small tank with a heater in to ensure correct temp and got at least 80 %-90% hatch rate.
Keep trying

day 20 - 19 Nov 06
 

Well I have 1 left.
looking good.
and I also now have another batch of about 50 more babies to attempt to raise again. (born Friday)
Man, this is going to be alot of work.
I am going to try to learn how to decapsulate the brine shrimp as I think that may have been why a couple of them died from eating the shell
wish me luck with this new batch.
Neal

Good luck with the new fry, Neal :)

Hey Neil , Good luck with the new batch . Not to be pushy but you should not need to de-capsulate the brine shrimp eggs . :) :) If you are using the pop bottle method the shrimp and shells are completely separated when you allow the hatched shrimp to syphon out of the bottom airline leaving the shells on the top of the water ! If you want to make absolutely certain shine a light at the bottom of the bottle ,as the shrimp are attracted to the light.
Hope the last little guy survives.
....................Dave

When I was breeding angels, austrialian rainbows I used the capsulated . as far as I remember the decaps would not hatch.

To avoid getting shells in your live BBS I turned off the air for about 20 mins or so. then I turned on a light near the base(already had a hard air tube in to syphon out the BBS) the shells will float to the surface. never had any problems with shells.


I too used a 2l pop bottle. I drilled the hole through the ca which was no the bottom. inserted a rigid airline tube in and siliconed it.


Good luck

Jim

What type of horses are they, I believe Anthony already asked you?

As for your losses, we have tried raising reidi's several times and found that the losses seem to come from three main reasons, some which you may have done trying to raise yours.

Firstly, if the babies snick air, they are good as dead. It seems they cannot evacuate those tiny bubbles stuck in their gut. You have to be very careful while catching them in the main tank and then transporting them into their own tank. This is problem is further escalated once you use an airpump to create current only to find micro bubbles sticking to the glass bowl or floating in the water coloumn for you babies to snick. Also, be careful where you place the light on their tank. These guys are attracted to light instinctvely, so if you place a light on top of their tank, they have a good chance at snicking air.

Secondly, ammonia poisoning. Having them in such a small bowl and feeding them so much food so often will give you major headaches with ammonia spikes. This is a major killer and no doubt a cause of some of your death IMO. It is vital to find a balance of tank size, food concentration and MOST IMPORTANTLY waterchanges leading to superior water quality.

Lastly, feeding the correct food at the right times. Yes rotifers are great, but are they eating them? or are the rotifers droping from pH or temp shock as soon as they enter your baby tank, hence ammonia problems. BBS is important too, but when to make the transition? Also, I have heard numerous problems with baby horses overfeeding on BBS or getting damaged by BBS in their guts. BTW, decapsulating BBS eggs is very easy using bleech.

All in all, the difficulty of raising ponies depends on the SPECIES and the equipment used and of course your experience raisng these guys.

Anyways, thats all I gots to say, good luck with the next batch but don't get dissapointed if history repeats itself. If these guys where easy we would see $1.99 weekend specials on ponies at the LFS.

As far as I know, they are reidis.

one thing you can do is use SW from your tanks. I have done this with great success as well.

Good luck on the 2nd batch of Seahorses


jim

Hey Neal I tried raising some FW ram fry a few times with no luck :sad: I recently bought some german rams from a breeder and he gave me tips on raising them that seemed so simple, maybe it will work on the ponies.
He would put the babies in a tupperware container, just a round 4" one, and just let it float around in the main tank with a air line with about 1 bubble every 2 seconds just for water movement and he would have like 150 babies in it. The reason why this rather than it's own tank it like puting 200 babies in a gymnasium then throwing food in there, they are young and haven't learned to find food or eat yet, so by conentrating them in a small area they learn faster cause food is always floating around in there. And water changes a simple just dip the dish down a bit and viola done new water just make sure your don't swish them out :mrgreen:
Now that I know all this think my rams will lay eggs???
HTH

thanks everyone for the advice and tips
I will try a couple of them in the future.
this second batch isn't doing all that well
I think I may have overdosed them on Prime.
I was adding some every water change and I was doing waterchanges every 3 hours...so yea, too much chemicals.
they are moving around more now, but they weren't looking good over the weekend...I haven't removed any bodies yet because I am finding it difficult to tell whether or not they are dead or alive. There are lots of them just lying on the ground, but they are still moving around.
I still have one alive from the first batch.
I am feeding it baby brine shrimp and Rotifers.
I am putting in Phytoplankton into the tank as well in hopes to keep the food alive for while and ensure that they are nutrutious enough to sustain the seahorse.
Raf - reference the rotifers - I take out tank water everyday out of tanks to replace the water that I take the rotifers out with.
I have 10 gallons of rotifers going at all times and generally switch about 4 - 5 gallons of the water everyday out of my different tanks.
the ph and such should be relatively the same as the water in the baby seahourse tank as I have taken the water out of the main SH tank.
I don't think the rotifers are dying in the baby seahorse tank.
I belive that the water conditions were the biggest problem of the deaths...
I am trying to do more water changes and although I want to have some prime in the water, I definitely was putting in way too much.
Lessons learned.
As well, I increased the amount of air bubbles. I am not using a stone, I just have a tube into the bottom of the tank that causes the current to keep them moving and yet, producing no noticable air bubbles to create any issues that I am aware of.
I realize that I always have the chance of some small bubbles, but can't think of any other way to do this. they definitely need some movement and air.
The lamp I do have is at the bottom of the tank so to attract them to the bottom. at the same time, the rotifers and brine shrimp are attracted to the same area. Thus making them easier for the SH to eat.
I have yet to decapsulate the bringe shrimp and am undecided to which way I am going to go. I have read that the shells can cause the death of the SH cuz they get stuck in the mouth.
However, I am really really busy with my Limo company, my career in the army and my Salt water business and am finding that I just don't have enought time to do everything.
So yea, decapsulating may wait a little and I might just continue on with the way I am currently doing things. Currently, this consists of turning off the air supply and allowing the rotifers to settle to the bottom and then siphoning them into the SH tank...I add newly hatched without adding anything. After the first day, I start adding flake food and enrichment formula to feed the brine shrimp to keep them going and nutritional.
My biggest thing is once they are in the baby SH tank, how do I keep them alive and nutritious. I am currently adding phytoplankton in hopes that will work..but any other suggestions would be appreciated. I definitely don't want to add the enrichment formula as the cost would be higher than I want to incur.
thanks again for the advice and if anyone has any suggestions to what I am doing that would be greatly appreciated as I am definitely not an expert in the area of raising them.

Try visiting www.seahorse.org and have a look at some people's reidi setups. I cannot offer any great advice since I have been trying to raise reidi fry for a while now with no luck. The longest I've had one live is 2 weeks. My ponies give birth to over 200 fry every 2 weeks, and its disheartening to flush them but I just dont have the time for them right now.

With reidis its extremely important to keep them away from the surface of the water. That is the reason why the airline tubing is in there, to keep em down near the bottom. So the positioning of the tubing is critical- it needs to create a circular flow pushing the fry quickly back down to the bottom if they happen to catch a ride to the top. Obviously the airline helps with airation, but IMO preventing them from snicking air is the biggest challenge.

How can you tell if they snick air? Its quite easy. You'll see a shiny little bubble in thier 'throat' area. I'd say 80% of my fry have air bubbles by the time I see them in the morning (they are usually always born at night). If you have difficulty seeing the air bubble then try shining a light on them to make sure they do or dont.

I think on seahorse.org its the general consensus that a "kriesel" setup works the best. You'll need a plastic fishbowl. I have yet to try this setup, but once I get some time I will give it a go.

Anywhoo, I'm not sure if it helped, but it would be fantastic if you had succsess with your fry. I cant wait to be able to raise the little tykes. Reidis are definately one of the hardest species to raise... I'm looking into adding another species that have fry that might be a little easier.
:)
-Diana

Day 24 - 23 Nov 06
 

Thanks Diane for the info.
I got alot of my info from Seahorse.org.
I think that my last batch of babies might have done alot of snicking.
unfortunately not many are left.
However, the one left from the orginal batch is still going strong.
I am feeding it BBS enriched with selco. I hatch a new batch every 2 or 3 days. feed them right away after the birth, then starting feeding and enriching every day so that they are still nutritional for the SH.
Alot of work though for one little guy.
But I am very proud of the fact that the little dude is still going.
it is still really tiny though.
I will keep posting the progress.
Neal