substitute for BBS

[fishboi]

has anyone tried this?

http://www.mreed.com/fryfoods.shtml

or anything else used as a substitution for baby brine shrimp.

i personally found there is nothing like BBS but found it annoying to hatch as i only breed fresh water fish and have to strain it before feeding but lately been hatching it using tonic salt and seem to work and i am able to just dump the lot in water and all. [hatch rate seems a lot lower though]

[Dark]

Without all the BS? yeah, right! :lol:

That was like reading the script for an info-mercial!

It does sound interesting, but personally i like the ingredients like to say a little more that 'flavour bursting particles' and 'component 1-5'.

Both sizes of the food contain a very small amount of material that is below the size stated on the label and a very small amount that is above. This helps unusually small fry catch up and unusually large fry find some particles that are just right for them.

or in other words: we can't get it to mix properly, so we came up with this amazing excuse to cover ourselves, and of course to benefit you! the consumer! :lol:

(order now and get a free set of steak knives)

on a more sane note, there are plenty of things you can feed baby fish - microworms, egg yolk mixed with spirulina, brine shrimp flake, crushed up normal flake etc... and i'm sure there are recipies out there for DIY (or 'Poor-mans') fry food.

i have used a few different brands of liquid fry food which seem to work about the same as our comical advertising maniac above, and i have seen some brands of flake food marketed at fry - but again, i think it is simply the left over powder from the machines that make the larger stuff, re-packeted and re-marketed, perhaps with an additional 10% of something so they can't get sued.

to this day, brine shrimp is worth the hassle, especially if you have a good setup for growing and harvesting them, and supplementing diets is important too (translates to 'variety', unless you are in marketing, when supplementing translates to stupid products and $$$!)

[ljtan55]

Hmm.. that stuff sounds interesting. Everytime I try to get BS, they hatch, they swim, and 3 days later they're all dead. Maybe its cos I use tonic salt... good for hatchin, not good for growing?

Fishboi how do ya strain the bs?

[fishboi]

i use the a tea strainer but I know a few people use coffee strainer and stockings.

i use a small container with air bubbles pumping in it but most people use the up side down coke bottle method.

how does everyone hatch theirs?

[ljtan55]

In a glass jar with an aerator sitting in a bucket with a heater. Higher temps help them hatch quicker <-- read that somewhere, temp about 25 celcius. Good hatch rate, its keeping em ALIVE I'm having problems with.

Ahhh tea strainer. Good one. I've been using an eye dropper and a flashlight to collect em, was starting to worry I was preserving my fish with the salt. :oops:

[Dark]

i'm lazy:

i do two at a time:

take two upside down coke bottles with the bottoms cut out

place them in something so they can't fall over (i use a spare fish tank)

in a 2 litre jug, mix three tablespoons of rock salt with some really hot water until the salt dissolves

top up with cold water to two litres

pour half of the water into each coke bottle

add an air-stone to each bottle and turn on so that the surface of the water is bubbling, but not foaming (i have found the foam traps the eggs)

add a 1/2 teaspoon of eggs to each bottle

wait 24 hours

turn off air, remove airstone, apply light to the bottom of the bottles, use another air-line to syphon out BBS into a fine mesh net (muslim cloth is cheap and can be fitted to an old net frame)

rinse briefly with water - non-chlorinated is probably best (i use fish tank water)

feed to fishies - either dump them in the tank, or put them in a small container with an amount of water, and use a syringe to collect and deliver 'measured' amounts

as you can see, i don't care much for heating, and i'm certainly not going to worry about the pH of the water.

after 24 hours the eggs hatch with good yield, i wouldn't say perfect, but i'm not overly concerned - i often have more BS that i can deal with.

the cultures tend to survive after hatching for about 24 hours, after that the contents of the bottle start to smell funny

helps to have more than one culture on the go at a time with staggered start times so you get staggered hatch times

i'm sure there are plenty of ways to improve my technique, but it works

[JoandWilly]

I just make up like a tablespoon of eggs in one go and then freeze the rest in a bit of water, that way you always have bbs on hand and it cant be any different to the shop frozen stuff.

[fishboi]

the whole point for me to hatch BBS is to have small live food wouldn't it be cheaper to buy frozen ones if ur just goin to freeze them anyway?