Culturing brine shrimp in a reef tank?

[monocus]

i have DE-capsilized eggs that i can give you to start out.then you can hatch them in salt water.for gut loading i grow various phytoplankton and rotifers.j&l sells decap eggs at around $40 for a 3.5 oz bottle,but i get mine from brine shrimp direct by the lb(2 lb of premium small breeder size was $160 delivered)

[rayjay]

What different phytos do you have? Rotifers are no good for enrichment as they are less nutritious than the newly hatched brine nauplii.
I have to enrich the rotifers before I can use them for seahorse fry, and even clownfish fry do better when properly enriched. They don't take as long as brine nauplii to enrich as they are voracious eaters.
It's a LOT cheaper to decapp your own cysts.
I buy the best cysts Brine Shrimp Direct sells and while it took me a few batches to get the timing down right, it's basically pretty simple and you can do a large batch to last a few weeks by storing them in saturated salt water in the fridge.
I did find however that when I changed brands of bleach, I sometimes had to adjust the time of bleaching as not all bleaches are the exact same strength.
When I stick to using the same brand I don't have the problem.

[monocus]

nanochloropus,tetraselmus,dunaiella,and soon isocrysis(as soon as i fix the blue leds for the lighting).i feed these all to my rotifers and brine shrimp

[rayjay]

That's a good mix of phyto to use.
I'm too lazy to do all the work for the amount I need.
I had at my maximum, 150 gallons of nanno under culture but when I found how easy it was to grow the rots and brine with spirulina powder, I cut down to a couple of gallons.
For me, the nano was extremely easy other than when it became contaminated with rots, but the others were a PITA when I tried to ramp up to large containers.
Now, I do a bit more in the way of water changes for rots and brine, but save a heck of a lot of time in not culturing phyto. (hydro bill lowered too)

[monocus]

i use aquamedic reactors(3 rotifer,1 nano,1 tetra,1 dunaliella,1 isocrysis,1 spare)-all running off one pump(helon hp 20).i made all my lights using 1 watt leds(various colors for different phyto)so the cost is fairly small to run them.i produce more phyto than i can actually use(i have 11 tanks running at the moment-240 gal-10 gal)and i supply rotifers to j&l weekly(missed last week due to work schedule)i may spend an hour or two a week looking after everything

[jason604]

im using kent marine'es phytoplex. Is this good enough or garbz?

[rayjay]

I use 5g water bottles to grow rotifers, and 26g rubbermaid garbage pails to raise the brine shrimp.
Those reactors would never supply me with enough product to feed my production of rots and brine so I used 5 and 6g pails and 26g rubbermaids to supply enough.
Now, I just have a couple of gallons of nanno that I use for seahorse fry containers when I have any on the go.
For the amount you are using, Jason, the phytoplex should do just fine.
For me, it would be EXTREMELY costly.

[daniella3d]

feeding a mandarin with live white worms is much less of a trouble than having to hatch brine shrimp and the worms usually get to the liverock and bottom where the mandarin can eat them easily, as it is hard for a mandarin to eat free swimming things.