Brine Shrimp

[Silvertongue700]

Are there benefits to feeding brine shrimp to adult fish that can't be had with good quality dry food?

 

[Midwater]

Live food, including brine shrimp, is naturally eaten by fish. I think it is a good supplement to pellets.

 

[Deadeye]

Nice treat every once in a while. My fish go crazy for it when I put it in.

 

[1 2many]

It depends on the size of your adult fish. Brine shrimp can be too small to be considered a viable food source for large species. But natural foods in general such as shrimp, worms, etc are beneficial to your fish’s diet. It helps improve color and also helps condition them to spawn. Newly acquired species that are picky and reluctant to accept dry foods at first will readily take natural alternatives. I always try to get my fish eating dry foods because it’s complete nutrition but I also provide them with variety. Through observation my fish always tend to do better when offered multiple food sources including live and frozen compared to just 1 type of pellet

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Both adult drine and baby brine can be excellent foods. The problem is they do not retain their nutritional value for very long. With BBS the nees is to feed them as close to hatching time as psovvibl;e. A few hours later and they are pretyy but barely have any nitritional value. Adults hild teir nutritional value longer. However, it is a good idea to power feed (enrich) the adults before feeding them to the fish. With BBS this is difficult as they need to molt fairly soon after they are hatched.

When Artemia nauplii first hatch (Instar I), they do not have a complete gut, and it is not until they develop to Instar II that the baby brine start to feed. The time of development to Instar II depends on a variety of factors (most importantly temperature, but also salinity), but occurs within 6 to 30 hours after hatching. At 28°C (roughly 82°F) it takes about 8 hours for the newly hatched nauplii to begin feeding, and as the temperature drops, that time becomes much longer. As soon as the nauplii hatch, they begin to digest their yolk and become less nutritious with time after hatching, however, once they reach the second instar, they can begin to feed, and you can enhance their nutritional value by feeding them a highly unsaturated fatty acid (HUFA) supplement that provides high concentrations of essential fatty acids for the health of most marine animals (reviewed by Coutteau and Mourente 1997; Rainuzzo et al. 1997; Sorgeloos et al. 2001).

I went through this years back as the rersult of an AC thread with a marine biologist (Rob Toonen) who explained it all to me. You can read about this here https://reefs.com/magazine/aquarium...ive-foods-for-the-coral-reef-aquarium-part-2/

Yes this was written for SW folks, but the nutritional info applies to fresh as well. The big difference is sw fish need HUFAs added which fw fish do not.

I feed my fry a mix of frozen cyclops, rotifers and, for the slightly larger fry, daphnia. I also keep some BBS frozen cubes. But these are for when I have no time but must feed fry. When I messed with angel fry I hatched BBS. Messy (from fizzing sw) and it took up space I did not have. I also feed frozen adult brine as well as brine gut loaded w/ sppirulina. But I really prefer mysis which I also feed along with blood worms (all frozen).

The best foods for fish are live. They will grow faster, be healthier and be more likely to spawn on such a diet. The same applies to veggie matter. I did a bit of live but it was more work and space need than I could handle. So I use frozen and repashy as the next best choices. My experience is that diet is one of the most important things we control in terms of how are fish will do in general. There is a difference between fish being OK and fish which thrive and spawn. Diet can also bring out the best colors in fish.