Food for Brine Shrimp?

How were you planning to do weekly water changes that you mentioned earlier, without a net? How did you separate the nauplii from the hatching water to place in the raising tank?
I bought mesh bags from Brine Shrimp Direct that I use for the rotifers and for the brine shrimp until they are large enough for the nets I have.
Actually, I've now made a net using one of the mesh bags.
The 150 Mesh Bag works well for Brine Nauplii

 

I was initially planning to change the water once they've grown up a bit.
But I managed to change the water with the help of the air stone.
I attached the airstone and put it inside the water, the other end in a bucket, started to siphon the water out, and because of the air stones small holes, the shrimp didn't get sucked through. I double checked the water that came out and there weren't any shrimp in the bucket, so I guess it worked fairly well

 

The only problem with that is, you don't siphon out the gunk on the bottom of the tank, nor do you get the bottom and sides cleaned off of the bacteria forming on the glass.
Even with a mesh, you still retain the larger particles unfortunately until the shrimp are large enough to use a better mesh.
I let everything settle for a number of hours before siphoning off anything above the bottom layer of gunk and then dump that into an inverted pop bottle and let settle again to remove the remaining brine.

 

I have raised many brine shrimp to adulthood to food as live food to my reef tank. I feed them phytoplankton that I culture. My phyto setup is simple-2L clear pop bottles with 1.019 s.g. water some culture from Florida Aqua Farms and then 7 drops of Schultz brand liquid fertilizer (it contains no copper-some pple use miracle grow to culture phyto however miracle grow has copper and doesnt work as well either). Place a tube from an air pump into the 2L and put it in front of any flourescent light. Grows fast, feed to brine shrimp. They love it and grow fast. Ive fed shrimp wheat flower, yeast and other stuff and it just fowls the water. Phyto is best.

 

Yeah, that's what I was worried about, the water I siphoned out was murky but had no dirt swimming around. The shrimp are still very small, so I think I'll wait till they're a bit bigger to clean the bottom.

Atm, I'm trying to grow some algae, I would feed them the other types of food but wheat flower is just a lot cheaper and easier to get and I don't mind changing the water every 5-6 days.

 

ya if you dont mind the water changes then wheat flower is perfect. I spend too much time on other tanks to want to change water in my brine shrimp grow out tanks haha. lazy. plus i like my brines gut loaded with phyto when they go into the main tank as food.

 

If all you are feeding them is greenwater (nannochloropsis) then they won't have much in the way of a balanced nutrition, especially the fatty acid profile. If you add Tetraselmis to the mix it will work out great.
Even enriching them with spirulina powder for 4 hours (adults) is a heck of a lot better than just nanno, but if you add Algamac 3050 as well, you can get EPA and high DHA as well.
Then again, if you get Dans Feed from seahorsesource.com, you get the best with everything included that salt water fish make use of including probiotics.

 

Ya thats true but I am not so concerned about balanced diet. The shrimp are just a living treat for the tank. Keeps the fish happy and hunting.

 

Bad news
Yesterday night I went to see how my shrimp were doing and I saw that they were all in the bottom of the tank dead.
I guess the waste produced by them + not being able to use a filter killed them all.
Lesson learned

 

The good news is that at least you have learned that failures occur when doing it your first way.
It gives you the option of trying again using more tried and true methods.
If you learn to culture nannochloropsis, you will be able to feed the brine nauplii until they get large enough for a standard fine mesh net before having to change the water, IF you can have a low point in the container where the airline continually puts much of the nanno back in the water column when it attempts to settle. (like inverted water bottles for instance)
After that point you can experiment with the powders, but the spirulina powder I get from Brine Shrimp Direct is an excellent food and not much more than the flours some people try. I think I pay $10 for a pound of spirulina powder.
The other thing is that nauplii from 1/2 teaspoon of cysts are too many for just 10L of water. Eventually they suffocate as the oxygen gets used up.
If you go 1/2 teaspoon to 10 gal. you will be better off, but why not start off with a pinch of cysts to a 2L inverted water bottle, sticking to low density and small quantities until you learn a way that works for you, and then gradually increase the density until you have what you want. Saves a lot on wasting cysts in loosing efforts.