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Breeding Brine Shrimp - Growing them out


Pies

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I have just made some live brine shrimp up. Using the plastic bottle technique.

It would be great to try so larger ones too. Any experance with growing them out to larger size?

I want to do this as a small garage project, so please, no systems invloving baths out the back etc :)

Also can they become self sustaining or not?

You thoughts please.

Also if anyone has some for sale, or is interested in importing large tins let me know I am keen for some.

I know there are also different sorts, is one better than the other? I have no idea which I have.

Also if anyone has access to any phyto plankton cultures, would they please get in touch with me, I want to start a culture.

Cheers

Pies

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I had them growing in a plastic container. They grew a reasonable size and reproduced. I just used a square container, put some sand in the bottom, added sea water and brine shrimps then left it in the sun. It got topped up as the water evaporated.

I only grew them out of curiosity, not to feed the fish as I was told there is little nutritional value in them once they are more than a few days old.

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I have read that there is little nutritional value in the brine shrimp but good ruffage.

I am going to try and feed some as live food for coral, which apparantly love them, and its a kind of plankton supliment.

I also want to grown them to feed my pest Anemones, which will help them grow, which will make it easier to hunt them down and burn them out...

Am interested in growing larger ones mostly out of curiosity, partly out of the value of feeding some live food to my fish too.

So the acutally breed in the container without the cyst stage?

Pies

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I rarely fed them at all to be honest. From memory (it was a few years ago) algae grew around the sides of the container so they browsed on that. I think I occasionally added a very small bit of fine fish food but can't remember sorry.

They must have reproduced because 12 months later there were large and small ones swimming about.

They need a lot of surface area I think which is why they tend to die in small containers (eg bottles for feeding fry). If we got a bucket of live shrimp from Grassmere, you had to get it back to town ASAP ( a 30 min trip) or most would be dead. Adding a battery operated air stone helped a lot with survival rates. Of course, there were hundreds in the bucket whereas I had relatively few in my container so they were not crowded.

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I found that I only had success rearing them on with a proper salt water mix - no luck just using rock salt or sea salt (that you can use for hatching them). As Caryl's implied they'll live on algae that forms in the tank (I just used a smallish tank, no filtration but it did have aeration) I also fed them with powdered brewers yeast, spirilina powder and everynow and then liquid fry food.

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Folks,

Peter Sebborn had a culture going for several years in a stupidly

small container outdoors. They'd come to life when it rained and

slowly die off as the tank dried up over the summer, only to come

back at a later stage. There were various sizes in the culture so

I'm sure there were different generations, probably some eggs

didn't go into a resting stage and just hatched as they do in the

wild (otherwise you'd only get one generation per year which is

not a good thing if your lifespan is only a few weeks).

He used to feed adult brineshrimp to his fish very occasionally.

All was hunky-dory until some neighbourhood kids emptied the

culture onto the ground and stole the tank. Swines!

Andrew.

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Peter Sebborn had a culture going for several years in a stupidly

small container outdoors. They'd come to life when it rained and

slowly die off as the tank dried up over the summer, only to come

back at a later stage. There were various sizes in the culture so

I'm sure there were different generations, probably some eggs

didn't go into a resting stage and just hatched as they do in the

wild (otherwise you'd only get one generation per year which is

not a good thing if your lifespan is only a few weeks).

I've heard of others also doing the same thing!! Sounds like the easiest way to do it, that i've heard so far.

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