Live Brine Shrimp Cultures

[Guest clownfish4]

Does anyone have a live brine culture?  If so, have you noticed any significant improvements?  Is it a pain in the neck keeping them going?  Why are you using it?

[michaelg]

I do not try to keep them going continually.  Eggs go in, hatch, are used in 2-3 days, then restarted.  The baby brine are a good size food for many corals and other things.  I wouldn't bother with adult brine.  

Michael

[Lee Stearns]

Brine shrimp are batch cultures for the most part hatched and fed as Baby brine shrimp(BBS). They are restarted with eggs on an as needed basis and very simple. The BBS have some nutrition if fed in the first 24 hours, otherwise they need to be fed out, which is not terribly difficult either. They then need to be sieved out before feeding because the water they are in is pretty nasty. Brine shrimp are so easy simply because of the ease in hatching eggs. Almost no one raises them through maturity and then reproduction though I have just to see the cycle. For the price of a full bag of live fully grown brine it is hardly worth your while to play with them. The baby brine are grown as a feeder to fish larve at certain stages- but many fish- clowns among them need even smaller rotifers in the beginning. I think the reson many peple do not mess with baby brine shrimp to feed the reef tank is becaus of the egg shells take a long time to break down. There are ways to get the BBS to move toward light souce which gets them away from thier shells for sieving out but the whole mess is a process that most find it easier to just feed cyclopese or golden pearls which are about the same size in the food chain. Now rotifers are a whole differnt story--