breeding brine shrimp

[Din Gior]

Originally Posted by tt101

how long does it take for your shrimp to hatch? and why do you have a heater, is it necassary?

24-36h. heater speed up the process. I'm using aquarium water with one cup of fresh water.

[tt101]

thanks guys, can't wait to get my mandarin and try it out!!!!

[freezetyle]

you may want to do some reading on brine shrimp enrichment as well. There are a few products out there that can help with that. I've used selcon and the new era brine shrimp enrichment.

[reefgirl189]

I used to breed brine shrimp for my baby angelfish and other FW fish.

I got a little 5 gallon aquarium with one of those cheap little aquaclear filters with a dark drop cloth overtop.

Hatched WAY to many on the first try and ended up not needing 90% of them.

You can buy the kits or just the eggs from your LFS

[rayjay]

First of all, not all mandarins will eat brine shrimp. Most that do only eat the newly hatched brine.
Also, most people hatch bbs, they don't breed them as they have to become adults before they produce liveborn.
For the mandarins, the bbs should be ongrown for about 24 hours after hatchout, and then enriched for two 12 hour stages with new water and enrichment for the second 12 hours stage.
While adult brine can be enriched in a matter of about 4 hours, bbs take a full day for the maximum enrichment, 12 hours for just gut loaded.
It's also safer for the mandarin to decapp or at least sterilize the cysts before hatching as they are known carriers of nasty bacteria.
http://www.angelfire.com/ab/rayjay/Hatcher.html
http://www.angelfire.com/ab/rayjay/brineshrimp.html
When you buy cysts, make sure they have been stored in refrigeration and not kept on shelves or hooks. The quality degrades quickly the longer they are out of refrigeration and is a big reason some people have in failed or poor rates of hatch.

[toytech]

I used a 1l coke bottle and an air pump , no heater . I found that a good lightsource sped up hatching (usually all hatched in 24-30 hours).If you feed the bbs to the mandarin right after hatching thats when they are the most nutrtious . Frozen blood worms have worked for me twice and they where taken first or second try.The hardest part is not spooking the fish when you go to spot feed it , and make sure to cut the blood worms up a bit .

[tim the toolman]

I am hatching and raising baby brine all the time. I also brew phytoplankton to keep them alive. It is quite easy to do. Let me know if you want any info or wanna see it in action.