Ok, so ive decided I would really like to start breeding and keeping brine shrimp as a food supplement for my fish. However I'm not sure exactly what the best way to get started is. Should I just setup another small tank? What kind of filtration should I use so the little guys dont get sucked up? I'd like to do a refugium on my FOWLR tank and raise them there but not sure if that is the best route. Any help and experienced input on this would be great. Thanks
Need Help, Want to Breed Brine Shrimp
- Thread starter mtalica030
- Start date
I started a thread similar to this in the salt section a few weeks ago. Some said it was easy as putting them in a critter keeper at room temp. But I never really got a good answer as far as food for them or the filtration. Thought about buying the sea monkey food mix lol but there has to be a cheaper alternative so I will be following this as well
Yea. Ive read you can just feed them phytoplancton but that can get a bit pricey when youre talking about keeping thousands of them and trying to breed. I dunno, maybe it is just that easy. Hope I hear from someone that is currently doing it.
I had a little 2.5g tank going for them for a while. I had some luck feeding them Spirulina powder. Could also feed them brewers' yeast. Main thing is to not overfeed. You only want to add enough to discolor the water a bit. Wait a day until they clear it back up, then add some more. The water will always be slightly opaque, but with feeding spirulina powder you get a nice green tint to it, and as soon as the green tint is gone it's time to feed again. Made feeding fairly simple.
For filter options if you want to go that route, the only real choice is a sponge. The nauplii are so small that anything else will end up sucking them up and killing them. Some guys don't even use a filter. Just run an air line (no air stones) into a tank and let the shrimp do their thing. Siphon out any crud that accumulates on the bottom with a turkey baster or something.
For filter options if you want to go that route, the only real choice is a sponge. The nauplii are so small that anything else will end up sucking them up and killing them. Some guys don't even use a filter. Just run an air line (no air stones) into a tank and let the shrimp do their thing. Siphon out any crud that accumulates on the bottom with a turkey baster or something.
Thanks for the input. Just one more question. How many will i be able to keep at once? What I mean is, lets say I order a bag of live brine. How many do I keep in my tank to make sure they will keep reproducing? Also how many would I be able to keep in say a 2.5 gallon tank?
Hard to put a number on it. When they hatch there are tens of thousands of them. 
If you can get adults, I'd say 30 or 40 would be good to start out with in a 2.5g. Would guarantee you have a lot of females to start the population explosion. If you're hatching them, I'd probably do about 1/2 teaspoon of eggs and feed them out to your fish a bit at a time to thin the population as they grow. Think it takes 3 or 4 weeks for them to mature and start reproducing.
Unfortunately there's really not a lot of info out there about raising them. Tons of copy/pasted info about hatching them, everyone posting the same DIY method of using 1 liter soda bottles, etc. Just not much on raising them past the nauplii stage.
This is one of the better spots I found for info. http://www.reeflounge.com/showthread.php?t=1718
Some good ideas there.
Might search youtube too. It took a bit of digging, but I did find a couple videos on there about people raising adult brine shrimp.
If you can get adults, I'd say 30 or 40 would be good to start out with in a 2.5g. Would guarantee you have a lot of females to start the population explosion. If you're hatching them, I'd probably do about 1/2 teaspoon of eggs and feed them out to your fish a bit at a time to thin the population as they grow. Think it takes 3 or 4 weeks for them to mature and start reproducing.
Unfortunately there's really not a lot of info out there about raising them. Tons of copy/pasted info about hatching them, everyone posting the same DIY method of using 1 liter soda bottles, etc. Just not much on raising them past the nauplii stage.
This is one of the better spots I found for info. http://www.reeflounge.com/showthread.php?t=1718
Some good ideas there.
Might search youtube too. It took a bit of digging, but I did find a couple videos on there about people raising adult brine shrimp.
Great article. Thanks for the info. I think im gonna start on this next week if my wife will let me lol. I will post my progress.