feeding live baby brine shrimp

I want to try hatching baby brine shrimp to see if my mandarin will eat those while I try to up my pod population. But I hear that if these are not eaten within a few hours, the baby brine shrimp basically starve to death unless fed. What can I use to feed them so that they will live a while longer? Live phyto? Flake food? Other ideas? Thanks!

 

They will survive for around 48 hours without food as long as there is good aeration. You can feed them phyto and yeast or Highly Unsaturated Faty Acids (HUFA) which they will eat and keep them alive and growing they also become a lot more active. This will enrich the artemia and make them more nutritious for your fish.

 

HUFA? The only kind of HUFA I have sitting around is a bottle of Selcon that I use to soak my foods. Will this work? Or will it just float to the top of the water and be in-accessible?

 

Yes a drop of selcon per litre of brine shrimp should work fine.

 

Not meaning to hijack the thread but I have a question about live brine shrimp.
I hatched some but I am having trouble catching them. I know you are suppose to drain teh eggs off or whatever but some of the eggs float to the top and some sink to the bottom. So how am I suppose to get all the eggs out? sorry im just confused

 

After hatching brine shrimp cysts, let the container stand for about 5 minutes with a light to one side.
You want to siphon off the live nauplii from BETWEEN the top layer of empty cysts, and the bottom accumulated unhatched cysts, and most will try to gather closest to the light source.
By repeated siphonings, resting, etc, you can get most out without too much of the unhatched or empty cysts but unfortunately you still get some mixed in as not every cyst will sink or go to the top with a lot of them suspended in the culture water. If you don't have a net that will collect the siphoned cyst then you can use a coffee filter, preferably a plastic reusable one but it will plug up fairly fast. Rinse under the cold water tap before adding the food to the tank.
If you decapp the cysts before hatchout, they will hatch a little faster, be more nutritious because of less effort to break out, and be safer to use as food.
Cysts are known to harbour nasty bacteria that can sometimes do damage in your tank with the possibility of wiping it out. Decapping sterilizes them efficiently.
Also, cysts have been known to lodge in the digestive tract of some fish, causing problems up to and including mortality. Again, decapping eliminates this problem as there is no hard shell left when done corectly.
My page on BS growing has some links at the bottom that some would find interesting.
GROWING BRINE SHRIMP

 

thanks so much
now I g]have to find out how to decap them

 

For decapping, I put one tablespoon of cysts in two cups of tap water and let sit for half an hour. Then, I aerate for another half to one hour.
At this point, I had half a cup of bleach (just straight bleach no perfumes or additives) and aerate for 7 minutes. (use a timer so you don't kill the cysts)
At the end of seven minutes, immediately rinse the decapped cysts in flowing tap water for a minimum of four minutes to remove all traces of bleach and stop the process.
Some use a dechlorinator as well as a shorter rinse.
Then you can hatch the cysts out or you can store them by dehydrating them with salt water.
To dehydrate, place in some water and add salt with aeration until no more salt will dissolve in the water.
Store in refrigerator until used.

 

I buy brine shrimp cysts that have already been decapsulated. Saves me decapsulating when setting up.