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this is how I am currently doing brine shrimp. I have two of the Hobby Hatchery Dishes from Brine Shrimp Direct (link). I don't get as many shrimp as I used to with the inverted soda bottle method (and its variants) but I get enough to feed several tanks of fry.

I am using a salt formulation based on one I was supplied by Dick Van Hyfte . I have uploaded an Excel file with formulations based on volumes of saturated solutions to make up a gallon. What I am using right now is a mix made up for a 2 gallon bucket. To this bucket I add 10 & 3/5 table spoons of salt (2 from iodated table salt and the rest from pickling salt, I want the fish to get the iodine), 1 & 1/2 teaspoons of MgSO4 (MgSO4.7H2O, epson salts you get at the pharmacy or wherever) and 1/4 teaspoon of potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3). I add this to the bucket and then pour in hot water to quickly dissolve it and then top up the bucket. To the hatchery dishes I add 5 drops of household bleach. 6 drops will cause the shrimp to hatch faster but it will also kill many of the cysts resulting in a lower overal yield. The 5 drops are to sterilize the cysts (they come with Vibrio and other bacteria) and increase hatching. I got this idea from Stephen Tanner of Swiss Tropicals who got it from some guy in Germany who added 8 drops of bleach per litre of brine for hatching.

12-18 hours later (ambient temperature of about 74-76F degrees) I can start harvesting nauplii. One advantage of the method is that you are constantly collecting the "freshly" hatch Artemia naupli. With the inverted bottle method you get a quick, large harvest but the naupli are of various ages and varied nutrional quality. Storing the Artemia for later use also means they lose nutrional quality. That said, if I had more than a few tanks of fry I would use the inverted bottle method as I simply wouldn't have space for all the hatchery dishes.

I start a new dish every day to ensure constant supply. Since I have already mentioned Brine Shrimp Direct, I have also been using their Mysis & Garlic flake as well as freeze dried bloodworm, Freeze Dried Arctic Copepods and 300-500 Micron Golden Pearls. All my fish seem to take these and from about 2-3 weeks even Notho fry will start taking the Golden Pearls (but you need to introduce it in the morning when they are hungriest and more eager to try new things). Some Nothos are more excited to try new things than others... I don't use any frozen bloodworm. I do culture grindals to supplement Artemia naupli feeding and I find that without this the fry don't grow as fast. Oddly, the Rivulus cylindraceus don't like the Arctic Copepods but everything else does. -- Tyrone Genade








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