brine shrimp for coral beauty

If you have a local forum that other hobbyists from Trinidad frequent, you could post a request to see if someone is raising the brine shrimp and has some adults to spare for you to try. (Or any forum others around you may be using)
It doesn't have to be a salt water forum as fresh water people use live brine shrimp as well.

 

i've read that brine shrimp are only nutritious when they still have their yolk sack attached, so i don't think adults will make sense. the only benefit would be the size, but i've had some decent sized fish eat brine shrimp, so i'll give it a try.
a lot of the eggs have hatched already so i'll try it in a little while.

 

Brine shrimp nutrition has been maligned for a long time as people that think they know, keep posting that they have no nutrition. As newborn nauplii, they have a high fatty acid content and lower protein level but as they grow, the fatty acid level drops and the protein level increases to the point where juvenile and adult brine shrimp grown from GSL cysts, (the majority of cysts sold) have protein levels 49 to 62% while the wild caught ones range from 50 to 69% protein.
Where the misconception comes in is in packaging of frozen brine shrimp where the protein is given as wet weight percentage instead of dry weight percent. That includes all moisture in the package, brine moisture and packaging fluids as well.
Now if you compare the dry weight percentage with pellets or flakes made for fish, most of them aren't over 45% protein. If you take some flake food and put it in the tank for a second, and then remove it and calculate wet weight percentage of protein instead of dry weight, you will get figures more like what is on the packages of frozen brine.
Now, unlike dead or inert foods, the live brine shrimp can be improved on from the above figures by gut loading them before feeding them to your fish. You can add fatty acid content (i.e. Selco type products), protein (i.e. using spirulina powder) or even vitamins, as brine shrimp will eat anything that is micronized to the size they take.
Adult brine can be gut loaded in about and hour and a half.
Liquids need to be emulsified before feeding them to the brine, as in the Selco type emulsions.
Nutrition data comes from information on the United Nations site for Manual on the Production and Use of Live Food for Aquaculture edited by the Artemia Reference Centre at the University of Ghent.
Nutrition of brine
Which comes from the full article found at:
CLICK HERE AND SCROLL DOWN TO SECTION 4.0, ARTEMIA

 

well that was very informative. k+
how long does a brine shrimp take to become an adult?

 

There are a lot of variables when it comes to the time to get the brine to the adult stage.
On commercial aquaculture farms they can get them to adult as little as 8 days, but in practical terms for a hobbyist, it will take longer.
If you have ideal conditions and very low density of cuture, then you can do it in 8 to 10 days, but for me, it's not practical to do so as I need more that I can produce at those low densities. For a more dense culture it normally took me about 14 to 21 days at 82°F, depending on how much I fed which dictated how often I had to change the water.
I no longer use heaters so it now takes 21 to 28 days to get them to the reproduction stage. If I get more demand, I can put a heater back in one container and feed heavy, changing the water every 2 days and grow out two tablespoons in a 26g container in two weeks time.
Other than that, I take the slower lazy man's route of 3 to 4 weeks.
Type of food you use makes a difference also.
I found growth to be slow using yeast or rice bran powder and similar low quality foods, but much better using cryopaste like Tahitian Blend from Brine Shrimp Direct.
Now, since boarder crossings are taking too long, I have to use powders which can be shipped and not harmed by the delays at customs. I use spirulina powder, Algamac Protein Plus, and Algamac 3050.