Brine Shrimp Hatchery
- Thread starter matt b
- Start date
rykna
Active Member
Originally Posted by MaTT B
i have ive ben looking up seahorses for over 2 months ben in saltwater for a few yrs and i was just wondering what u think but thanks anyway
I'll walk ya through it
I helped Lisa set one up a couple of weekends ago. I got pics and info, I'll start stock piling info for you.
i have ive ben looking up seahorses for over 2 months ben in saltwater for a few yrs and i was just wondering what u think but thanks anyway
I'll walk ya through it
I helped Lisa set one up a couple of weekends ago. I got pics and info, I'll start stock piling info for you.
teresaq
Active Member
Originally Posted by zeke92
I wouldn't go through with this if you don't take the time to research. There are tons of guides online how to do a hatchery.
Thats what he was doing, Research. This site to to help people and educate.
If someone come here asking how to set something up, we are supose to help them, not keep turning them away. I have never seen anyone in the new hobbiest forum being told not to start a tank until they research more. Someone always steps in and gives thier advise. If you dont know how to set up a hatchery, then lets get someone who does, posting an answer. I have no clue how to do it. I have never had the need. It would be nice to find out in case I ever need it, and it would be nice to stay on this site to do it.
I wouldn't go through with this if you don't take the time to research. There are tons of guides online how to do a hatchery.
Thats what he was doing, Research. This site to to help people and educate.
If someone come here asking how to set something up, we are supose to help them, not keep turning them away. I have never seen anyone in the new hobbiest forum being told not to start a tank until they research more. Someone always steps in and gives thier advise. If you dont know how to set up a hatchery, then lets get someone who does, posting an answer. I have no clue how to do it. I have never had the need. It would be nice to find out in case I ever need it, and it would be nice to stay on this site to do it.
zeke92
Active Member
*sigh*
nothing i ever say comes out right. the way he wrote it i figured he didn't look it up. I'm not trying to be rude but both times i've said something wrong you have always been hear...to make me look rude
options:
1. go to your local lfs, see if they have an already made hatchery you can buy, as in, a small black base and tubing connected to it. you can find this and connect a bottle of coke or something to it and connect the hose to an airline.
2. Make your own.
were gonna go over option 1 first.
If your lfs has a hatchery, buy it, it's cheap, and it works. Take a 2 liter bottle, clean it good, and cut the bottom off just enough to take out the curves in the plastic. take the cap off. turn it upside down and
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it into the big hole on the top of the base. take airline tubing and connect it to the bottom hole, which should be sticking out a little. set the hatchery down and put the airline thorugh the hole on the side so the base can set flat. connect the other side of the tubing to an air pump. add water and make the salinity like 1.019 i believe. use any sort of saltwater, instant ocean is cheap and easy to find.
ok, now for option 2. i've got one method i did by accident, but the first method i'm gonna steal off another website. all rights of the following guide go to Loh Kwek Leong of Singapore
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To rig up your own brine shrimp hatchery, these are the items you will need - A 1.5 litre plastic bottle (preferably, one with many ribs and grooves on its sides), a one-way gang valve, a bit of string and an air pump.
Cut off the bottom one-third of the plastic bottle. Use a sharp object to make a small hole in the cap and then force the one-way gang valve through it. It won't leak and you don't have to use silicon if the size of the hole is slightly smaller than the gang valve. Punch 2 holes at the other end of the plastic bottle and pass the strings through them. Fill the bottle with water and check for leaks.
To hatch brine shrimp eggs, fill up the hatchery with about one litre of water. Add one tablespoon of salt and a small scoop of brine shrimp eggs. Connect the valve to an air pump and aerate the solution for 24 hours. The solution should turn a bright red colour, indicating that most, if not all, the eggs have hatched.
Do not use kitchen salt or the hatch rate will be very low. Many fish shops in Singapore sell brine shrimp eggs that will NEVER hatch no matter how long you aerate them. I think this is because they are not keeping their eggs in the proper conditions. Brine shrimp eggs should always be kept in the refrigerator (in the vegetable compartment, not in the freezer) when not in use.
To harvest the baby brine shrimps, close the gang valve and add half a litre of tap water to the hatchery. Disconnect the tubing and wait for 5 minutes. If all goes well, 3 layers will form in the solution. Egg shells will form the top layer; clear water will be in the middle layer and the baby brine shrimps will congregate at the lower one-third of the solution.
Release the gang-valve and let the solution flow into a bottle. As the water level in the hatchery drops, the egg shells stick to the sides of the bottle and voila, what comes out through the gang valve are pure baby brine shrimps.
You can either use a turkey baster or a brine shrimp net to feed your fish with the baby brine shrimps. I find it's better to use a turkey baster as dipping a net into one tank after another is a sure-fire way to contaminate every tank if one is diseased.
The nutritional value of baby brine shrimps drops dramatically a few hours after hatching. So do not leave your baby brine shrimps in the hatchery for too long. If possible, feed them to your fish as soon as they hatch.
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to be continued...
zeke92
Active Member
Now my method. I accidently did this months ago and it's still running.
i had a 18 gallon saltwater tank, water wasn't too great, all i wanted it to do was keep the liverock fairly live, lol. i didn't have testers or a filter back then to use on it. i added some brine shrimp one day and lots of eggs hoping maybe they would breed in there. no success. i did a water change one day, but forgot for like a week or more that the dirty water was still in the bucket cause it was covered up. looked in the bucket and wouldn't you know it, thousands of brine shrimp. They were breeding like crazy. all it was was a bucket of dirty saltwater, some eggs, and thats it. the bucket hasn't moved since that day and i have a continuous supply of brine shrimp. haven't bought eggs in months, cause i haven't needed them. sometimes i'll ad my leftover eggs to increase the population a bit if i have baby guppies, but thats it. so this could work for others to. salinity was low, about 1.019 which is perfect for brine shrimp i guess. you could try it, worth a shot. just grab a bucket, some low salinity water, add some food of some sort, and add eggs, cover it up for about a week and then take the cover or whatever off (mine was covered by a towel) and see what happened.
those are a few ways to do it. hope that helped.
i had a 18 gallon saltwater tank, water wasn't too great, all i wanted it to do was keep the liverock fairly live, lol. i didn't have testers or a filter back then to use on it. i added some brine shrimp one day and lots of eggs hoping maybe they would breed in there. no success. i did a water change one day, but forgot for like a week or more that the dirty water was still in the bucket cause it was covered up. looked in the bucket and wouldn't you know it, thousands of brine shrimp. They were breeding like crazy. all it was was a bucket of dirty saltwater, some eggs, and thats it. the bucket hasn't moved since that day and i have a continuous supply of brine shrimp. haven't bought eggs in months, cause i haven't needed them. sometimes i'll ad my leftover eggs to increase the population a bit if i have baby guppies, but thats it. so this could work for others to. salinity was low, about 1.019 which is perfect for brine shrimp i guess. you could try it, worth a shot. just grab a bucket, some low salinity water, add some food of some sort, and add eggs, cover it up for about a week and then take the cover or whatever off (mine was covered by a towel) and see what happened.
those are a few ways to do it. hope that helped.
jonthefishguy
Active Member
Soak 2 tablespoons of brine eggs in fresh water (6 ounces) and aearate it for an hour to rehydrate them. Then add 10 ounces of non scented clorox to the batch of reyhdrated eggs and mix for 3 to 5 minutes. This will decapsulate them. Mix them continuously and they should turn from brown to grey to orange. Rinse them under cool tap water using a brine net until the smell of clorox is removed. Place the eggs in fresh water again this time with chlorine remover for about 2 minuted until the water is nutreulized. Place the eggs in saturated brine water and they can be fed straight to your fish, stored in the fridge for 2 months, or hatched in salted water at 86 degrees over night.
monalisa
Active Member
Here's a picture of the hatchery that Rykna and I put together a while back. The 4 bottles are simple water bottles with the "bottoms" cut out and turned upside down. There are holes drilled about 2 inches from the top of the upturned bottles big enough to put clear tubing through (the other end of the tubing is attached to a pump).
Wooden stand is just a quick put together with scrap wood that will be strong enough to hold the weight of the bottles and water...hardest part about putting that together was getting the holes cut just right to fit the bottles without them falling through or tipping.
First bottle will be set up with saltwater (recommended 1.015-1.020) and decapsulated artremia for 24 hours, heated by the lights (pictured) and aerated via the tubing and pump. After that 24 hours, the contents from the first bottle will then be put into the second bottle (meanwhile set up the first bottle over again) which contains enhancement for the artemia or rotifers for another 12 hours being heated and aerated again...voila, ready for the little ones.
This is a 4 bottle set up, but I may be able to get by with just 2 bottles...IDK, haven't been able to try it out yet
Hope this helps.
Lisa
Wooden stand is just a quick put together with scrap wood that will be strong enough to hold the weight of the bottles and water...hardest part about putting that together was getting the holes cut just right to fit the bottles without them falling through or tipping.
First bottle will be set up with saltwater (recommended 1.015-1.020) and decapsulated artremia for 24 hours, heated by the lights (pictured) and aerated via the tubing and pump. After that 24 hours, the contents from the first bottle will then be put into the second bottle (meanwhile set up the first bottle over again) which contains enhancement for the artemia or rotifers for another 12 hours being heated and aerated again...voila, ready for the little ones.
This is a 4 bottle set up, but I may be able to get by with just 2 bottles...IDK, haven't been able to try it out yet
Hope this helps.
Lisa
zeke92
Active Member
lisa, you and rykna need to start a company, haha. thats a good method, even tho my bucket is simple and works for now, i may try your method out so i can get more at once. right now all i got is some guppies and occasionally feed them to my clownfish.
i don't get exactly how you set the bottles up tho. if you get time, could you let me know how to get the bottles right? sorry, just interested in that method.
i don't get exactly how you set the bottles up tho. if you get time, could you let me know how to get the bottles right? sorry, just interested in that method.
monalisa
Active Member
Originally Posted by zeke92
lisa, you and rykna need to start a company, haha. thats a good method, even tho my bucket is simple and works for now, i may try your method out so i can get more at once. right now all i got is some guppies and occasionally feed them to my clownfish.
i don't get exactly how you set the bottles up tho. if you get time, could you let me know how to get the bottles right? sorry, just interested in that method.
The part of the bottles that are wedged into the wooden stand is the "top" of the bottle that have a twist open top (simple wal mart water bottle). I can simply take the bottles out, empty into the next and set up again...simple, dimple. The bottles that I used have handy dandy handles on as well making transferring from one bottle to the next very easy.
As they are situated in the stand, there is also a hole drilled into the back of each bottle big enough to put clear tubing through. When the brine mix and brine/enhancement mix are in the bottles, I have the pumps going to aerate and the lights on them 24 hours a day to warm. As stated previously I haven't tried this out yet, but I have great faith that it'll work just fine.
Lisa
lisa, you and rykna need to start a company, haha. thats a good method, even tho my bucket is simple and works for now, i may try your method out so i can get more at once. right now all i got is some guppies and occasionally feed them to my clownfish.
i don't get exactly how you set the bottles up tho. if you get time, could you let me know how to get the bottles right? sorry, just interested in that method.
The part of the bottles that are wedged into the wooden stand is the "top" of the bottle that have a twist open top (simple wal mart water bottle). I can simply take the bottles out, empty into the next and set up again...simple, dimple. The bottles that I used have handy dandy handles on as well making transferring from one bottle to the next very easy.
As they are situated in the stand, there is also a hole drilled into the back of each bottle big enough to put clear tubing through. When the brine mix and brine/enhancement mix are in the bottles, I have the pumps going to aerate and the lights on them 24 hours a day to warm. As stated previously I haven't tried this out yet, but I have great faith that it'll work just fine.
Lisa
carrieabn
Member
Great info everyone! This is mynext project. I started a 12g salt a few months ago and quickly upgraded to a 55, I left the 12 running to set up for a pony tank. I plan on getting ponies after the 1st of the year so between now and then I will be setting up a hatchery with some of this great info!!
rykna
Active Member
Originally Posted by MaTT B
well i have a gift card for my lfs so if they have something im just gonna buy that but if not im gonna set1 up like this and for the food dish do u just put a little rock on the bottom and then put the shrimp in the dish and let the ponies go to work
Save you gift carf for equipment and water supplies. Dwarf seahorse will only eat Live baby brine shrimp. So the dish will not work for the ponies. Also the Brine Shrimp hatchery combos that you can buy at lfs, DO NOT work.
well i have a gift card for my lfs so if they have something im just gonna buy that but if not im gonna set1 up like this and for the food dish do u just put a little rock on the bottom and then put the shrimp in the dish and let the ponies go to work
Save you gift carf for equipment and water supplies. Dwarf seahorse will only eat Live baby brine shrimp. So the dish will not work for the ponies. Also the Brine Shrimp hatchery combos that you can buy at lfs, DO NOT work.
rykna
Active Member
No prob: the only bad question is the one not asked
The orginal hatchery, which I still use was designed by Bronco300. He had everything drilled and sealed. The hatchery Lisa and I made is a simplar version. The air tubing is threaded through the bottles in a hole, on top, that we drilled. To remove the brine, just detach air line and pick up bottle and move it to the next stage.