Hatching baby brine shrimp...

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bmxer4ever

Fire Eel
MFK Member
May 25, 2006
1,036
8
68
Glasgow, Scotland
A lot of people seem to be asking about hatching your own bbs.... There's loads of ways to do it as you'll see if you do a Google search, but here's my way. Cheap and relatively easy. A little bit of DIY and 24 little hours....

Heres the kit I use... all will be explained!

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Stage 1
Make your bbs hatcher... I use the top of a plastic milk jug. Cut the jug in half so you still have the handle attached. You'll need to keep the lid and punch/drill a small hole in it - just big enough to push your airline through.
Push the airline through and stick a Y-piece or T-piece in the end. Put a bit of silicone in and around the hole in the lid and pull it back through until the Y-piece/T-piece jams in the hole. Let your silicone dry. This should give you a nice airtight/water tight seal.
You should now have the airline & lid assembled and sealed. Now screw the lid back on the jug, puttin silicone on the threads - again to acieve a watertight/airtight seal.

Should look something like this...

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Once your silicone has dried, do a water test and see if everything is sealed - just fill the hatcher with water, making sure to keep the other end of your airline above the waterlevel!.
If it's ok, attach your airline to an air supply, fill the hatcher with tank water (with the Sera mix I use it requires 500ml of water - I've marked the 500ml level on the hatcher) and clip it to the inside of your tank. I do this in my fry tank - no big fish to knock things about. The reason I put it in the tank is simple - the bbs require similar temperatures to hatch as your fish do to live.
Pour the brine shrimp eggs/salt mix in and let it bubble away for 24 hrs. If you only have eggs, then add salt to the water at the rate of 15gms per 500ml.

Should look like this....

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Once your 24 hours are up (you can leave it for longer) switch off the air supply. Leave it for 5 to 10 mins for the mix to settle out. You should see the hatched eggs floating on the surface and the hatched bbs swimming around in the mid level of your hatcher.
Stick the other end of your airline into a glass jug and use it to siphon the shrimp out of the hatcher. Stop siphoning before the water in the hatcher drops all the way or you'll siphon the hatched eggs as well.
I usually check at this point to see if I've had a good hatching. If not, I pour it back in and reconnect the airline and leave it for a few more hours.
Once in the jug, I add some more tank water to dilute the brine (more on this later) and let it settle under a lamp. (I use a desk lamp).
You will see all the shrimp swimming around, with unhatched eggs on the floor of the jar, hatched eggs floating on top.
I use a big plastic syringe with airline attached to suck up the live bbs. You can now run them through a coffee filter paper to get rid of the liquid, then feed them to your fry - just turn the filter inside out and rinse it in your fry tank. If you don't mind a bit of brine in the tank, you can miss out the filter paper and just squirt the bbs straight in to your tank - one reason why I dilute the brine.
I usually add more tank water and small amount of salt back into my hatchery, reattach the airline and leave for a few hours, then empty the whole lot into an empty jug, again diluting the brine with more tank water, then repeat the settling/syringe/syphon process.

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If you have an excess of brine shrimp at this point - which I usually do- you can freeze some for later. Just siphon out and pop in an ice tray. Just fill each compartment 1/3 of the way and top up with tank water. This helps it freeze.
When you defrost, you can either filter the mix as before, or do what I do - just pop a cube in the tank and watch the fry go mad for it!
Hope all this has given you all some good ideas - as I said, this is what I DO. It works for me, but I'd be very interested to hear other ideas and methods.

bmxer4ever

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born2lovefish;533825; said:
Nice setup. I just got to my LFS and buy some live adult ones and put them in a couple gallon container. Give them a couple weeks and babies will start multipling like guppies!

Might give that a try!
I do the hatching thing because it guarantees me food for my fry within 24 hrs of starting it.
 
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