Brine growing - what am I doing wrong?

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Hi

Hatching brine is easier than changing a babies nappy, and I have basically mastered the process.

But, gettingn those little buggers to grow to adult size is where I keep on running into brick walls. What am I doing wrong?

After hatching (about 18-26hrs) I place the nauplii in a growout container. Then I feed them with Brightwell AminOmega, which I dissolve. I make the water in this container with regular marine salt. I airate one large bubble of air every 2nd second or so.

The brine are doing well, great in fact. They grow to about 2 days old, and then I normally do a 20% water change or so. Then after I have done this, I have a sudden massive crash, and all brine shrimp die.

What am I doing wrong? I cant get them to grow past two days.

Advice needed please.
 
Agreed with Anemone, remember I told you the other day , its OK to give them lots of O2

Mine looks like a pot of boiling water.


Also...

How are you doing your water changes? Are you siphoning the junk off of the bottom? I keep mine in round containers. I turn off the airline, shine a light in from the top to get the brine to the top, swirl the water around in a circular motion, once everything settles, the garbage is in the center laying on the bottom and I can easily siphon it out.
 
Jaco - I am going to eco the statements made in the other two posts. Brine-shrimp can handle aeration, most of the sudden day 2 type deaths can be avoided by feeding on day 3 and aeration. For the sake of not repeating myself to often (sea-monkeys - LOL), I use to tell the customers to give the brine-shrimp air not food.

Love Anemone's concept of cleaning the bottom but are you not loosing a lot of unhatched eggs ? One other ideal way of breeding Brine-shrimp is in a large container like these small porta pools add salt, water, and eggs and of course organic matter, then just leave them to grow on there own.

Winter temps. will affect your hatching and adult rate. We are having a cold winter which will also mean that you are going to find the failure rate higher.

Hope this helps a little.
 
Jaco - I am going to eco the statements made in the other two posts. Brine-shrimp can handle aeration, most of the sudden day 2 type deaths can be avoided by feeding on day 3 and aeration. For the sake of not repeating myself to often (sea-monkeys - LOL), I use to tell the customers to give the brine-shrimp air not food.

Love Anemone's concept of cleaning the bottom but are you not loosing a lot of unhatched eggs ? One other ideal way of breeding Brine-shrimp is in a large container like these small porta pools add salt, water, and eggs and of course organic matter, then just leave them to grow on there own.



I only put the hatched brine in these containers. The brine should be hatched in a separate container and rinsed. There shouldn’t be any unhatched eggs in a small scale grow out IMO. I also decapsulate the eggs before hatching.

As far as the waiting two days, it’s my understanding that the brine will lose a significant amount of weight if not fed around the 12 hour mark after hatch. I don’t have the space or time to keep brine around for 3 days before feeding.

I do like your idea of using the pools. I had planned to try it, but haven’t found the time to even start. Maybe someday!
 
I only put the hatched brine in these containers. The brine should be hatched in a separate container and rinsed. There shouldn’t be any unhatched eggs in a small scale grow out IMO. I also decapsulate the eggs before hatching.

As far as the waiting two days, it’s my understanding that the brine will lose a significant amount of weight if not fed around the 12 hour mark after hatch. I don’t have the space or time to keep brine around for 3 days before feeding.

I do like your idea of using the pools. I had planned to try it, but haven’t found the time to even start. Maybe someday!

I was reading a article on the Sea-horse forum discussing enriching Brine-Shrimp in order to treat a Sea-horse with tail rot and I see that the one poster made mention of the fact that they are not filter feeders as initially thought either.

It's pretty similar to the two or three day feeding. It's amazing just how little we do know about the worlds most common fish food. No matter "how we slice it" I agree that Brine-shrimp are at their best when they are one day old.;)

Now go get that pool, and try my other suggestion, before you know it you will be supplying the local pet stores with weekly hatches.
 
We just put them in 220 litre drums cut in half in the sun. Add live brine shrimp and leave them to do their own thing. The salinity is a lot higher than normal seawater, we probably only siphon out gunk from the bottom once a year or two, we hardly ever use them for feeding as we use other live foods that are more nutritious. Adding them to seahorse foods occasionally, if there are public around wanting to watch them feed and we have no other foods available.
I am intending to jack this up in the future by putting them in a larger bin with aeration and phyto for feeding, but we have not got around to that yet.

Rogan puts leftover brineshrimp that are a few days old in a bucket at home out in the courtyard and uses water from splitting his phyto cultures and they are also growing to full size without problems. The salinity depends on how much rain we have had and how much phyto he has added.
 
Thank you for the advice guys and girl...

I hatch the eggs in a 2 litre bottle. Then 18-30hrs after hatching, I feed one half of the batch to my Mandarins and the other goes into a growout 2 litre bottle. I do water changes by syphoning the bottom of the 2l bottle. I only do a water change on day 2, and then comes the crash...

I have a heater in the water, and temps are around 26. I have now increased aeration, but as per Anemone I will go even more. Just thought too much might kill em.

So what are we saying on feeding? Do we feed immediately, or do we wait after day two?

I fully agree that dayold is the best time to feed to your LS, but I need the large brine to help me wean the mandarin. I have to get large brine, in order to feed frozen brine together with the large brine...

Otherwise I would like to just stick with nauplii, as the Mandarins are in GREAT shape!!! But what do I feed that is in similar size to nauplii? I have tried Cyclop-Eeze, but for the life of me they just wont go down, they all float...

So at this stage I am really just keeping the mandarins healthy and alive, but I need large food before I can start weaning.
 
Thank you for the advice guys and girl...

I hatch the eggs in a 2 litre bottle. Then 18-30hrs after hatching, I feed one half of the batch to my Mandarins and the other goes into a growout 2 litre bottle. I do water changes by syphoning the bottom of the 2l bottle. I only do a water change on day 2, and then comes the crash...

I have a heater in the water, and temps are around 26. I have now increased aeration, but as per Anemone I will go even more. Just thought too much might kill em.

So what are we saying on feeding? Do we feed immediately, or do we wait after day two?

I fully agree that dayold is the best time to feed to your LS, but I need the large brine to help me wean the mandarin. I have to get large brine, in order to feed frozen brine together with the large brine...

Otherwise I would like to just stick with nauplii, as the Mandarins are in GREAT shape!!! But what do I feed that is in similar size to nauplii? I have tried Cyclop-Eeze, but for the life of me they just wont go down, they all float...

So at this stage I am really just keeping the mandarins healthy and alive, but I need large food before I can start weaning.

When Rogan and I feed cyclopeeze we mix it in a bit of water in a glass first and stir it round quite a while before using it to feed. This helps a lot with getting it to sink down, otherwise it tends to float. You can also use it to enrich brine shrimp.
 
Jaco - I see you are JHB based. Most of the pet stores receive fully grown live Brine-shrimp on a Friday. Why not buy a packet or two and if you need to you can always enrich them for a few days ?

It might even be a nice way to get your first large culture going in the back yard, temps are still a bit low at the moment but our summers are Brine-Shrimp heaven
 
two days and die? sounds like ammonia, i would consider putting brine shrimp in a container with algae coated walls, or with a ball of caluerpa , but also a water change twice a day(smallish one of ten to fifteen percent..) drip replacement water in. other choice is cultivating greenwater to dripfeed into brine shrimp container.(these are my imo)
 
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