Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

I now have a self-sustaining (nearly so) brine shrimp tank. I add about 5ml of Pro-culture fertilizer to my 10 gallon tank about once every two weeks. I get loads of brine shrimp each week. All I'm feeding them if light and the pro-culture.

I have marine algae (tetraslmis) and it seems to grow faster than the shrimp can eat it. I started this tank towards the end of December 2006 and I just add R/O water & salt as needed to maintain 35 PPT salinity.



In this pict you can clearly see the mating pairs and females with eggs.


The females give birth to live naupli, 5 or 6 a day, so there are always lots available.

Nice picutres, cool green water effect . Is the water green due to Pro-culture fertilizer or marine algae? How long is the average lifespan of each shriimp?

The water is green due to the algae. Pro-culture doesn't add any color to the water.

I've never tracked how long mine live, but I've read they live about 50 days.

Hmm, I wonder if nerites would breed successfully in that environment...

No, I've tried.

I wish my water was that green. Maybe algae dont like compact fluorescents.

I get the stuff that grows on the walls, but my water stays clear.

I have true marine algae that is free swimming. It needs ferts to keep growing, so I use Kent Pro-Culture. It takes about 1ml each of the 2-part to keep it going.

FL lights I use work fine. I use dayligh bulbs.

Here is something kool. It doesn't take much salt to keep brine shrimp alive. I have a tank I keep killies and endlers live brearers in. The killies need about 2 tsp per gallon of sea salt and the endlers don't care if there is a little salt.

I fed them brine shrimp last night and today, almost 24 hours later, the brine shrimp are still zooming around. There were more than the fish could eat.

I fed them brine shrimp last night and today, almost 24 hours later, the brine shrimp are still zooming around. There were more than the fish could eat.

That is kool There is always soething new we can learn!

Wow! How is the tank doing?

I may have to try something like that...

You use daylight bulbs on that tank?

My understanding was that using sea salt, whether natural or synthetic, increased the hatch rate compared to table or rock salt. It stands to reason that once they hatch they are tolerant of different levels of salinity. The ones that live in seasonal pools would be subjected to relatively rapidly changing conditions between rainfall and evaporation.
It would be interesting to determine how salinity affects their life span, if it hasn't already been researched...

It is going great. Easiest setup I've ever seen. I've done practically nothing to it since I set it up in December.

Yes, daylight bulbs from home depot. No heater and just an open air line to set up a gentle motion of water. When it starts to yellow I put in 1 ml of Pro-Culture. That seems to last for several weeks.

Once they get going there are no eggs. The brine shrimp give birth to live naupli.

Hmmm, I really may have to try that....

Thanks for the info.

Brine Shrimp are suprisingly tough. I had a container I used to raise them, and at one point, I thought I had used them all, because I couldn't find any in the container. I set the container in a corner and forgot about it. Roughly 2-3 months later, I came across the container, which only had an inch of water left in it, and it was full of adult and young brine shrimp. I was really suprised...

It is more expensive but I switched to marine mixes for hatching brineshrimp and when have cultured them. Leaving 6700K compact fluorescents 24/7 resulted in green water, just appeared. I did not ever try to ID the species of algae. Maybe it was introduced with water from the original hatching container. The cysts sold are not sterile and may carry some dried algae spores.
The shrimp produced mostly live young but also some cysts that accumulated along the waterline at the glass. That surprised me since I really did not want any. It was more useful as a way to grow some larger shrimp in quantity. I started the cultures with only live nauplii.
It makes an interesting project but not very efficient as far as a source of live food for my needs.

It works out well for me. Only 1 10 gallon tank, no heater, and bubbles. I get big scoops of shrimp several times a weeks with no more effort that adding some R/O water a couple times a month. I usually pull a couple of tablespoons of solid shrimp. I've never made a dent in the population.

I never see cysts.