Breeding brine shrimp

I have a HOB refugium with a partition splitting it into two. I was thinking about growing brine shrimp to feed my tank rather than using frozen/pellets.

Thoughts and suggestions?

 

Doesn't work. Unlike things like mysid shrimp that we find in our systems, brine shrimp can't control their motion against even light current flow let alone the higher flows of most tanks. Also, food density for the brine to feed on would sure make a mess of your tank.
Any predation at all and the brine disappear in a hurry.
You can sterilize or decap, hatch and grow out to the size you want, enrich and rinse well and then place in the tank.
Raising Brine Shrimp to Adult

 

Well, I would place them into the HOB fuge without any predation. It is fed by a steady drip, so the water is darn near stagnant within it. I read that they don't require to be fed if they are in a marine system because there are suspended nutrients for them to feed on already.

 

Well as you probably know, you can find a spot on the internet that will say whatever you want to be told. That doesn't make it accurate information though.
It MAY be possible to have a few survive, but to have any meaningful numbers, it won't work without adding sufficient food to the system.
For the best information on brine shrimp (and other live foods)
"Scroll Down to Section 4. Artemia"

 

Unless you enrich them Brine shrimp have little to no nutritional value.

 

That is, to put it loosely, a misleading statement.
While the brine shrimp DO have a low fatty acid profile, they have a higher DW percentage of protein than most foods we feed our tanks.
Click on section 4.41 and see Table 4.41 from the link I provided previously.

 

In the late seventies, when many fish and shrimp hatcheries started to go commercial, switching from one source of Artemia to another provoked unexpected problems (Table 4.1.4.). Very significant differences in production yields were even obtained with distinct Artemia batches of the same geographical origin. Especially the pattern of total lipids and fatty acid composition, as well as the metabolization of fatty acids in the Artemia, seemed to differ widely from strain to strain, and even from batch to batch, as a consequence of the fluctuations in biochemical composition of the primary producers (mainly unicellular algae) available to the adult population. Cyst products from inland resources are more constant in composition, be it however at suboptimal low levels. Appropriate techniques have thus been developed to improve the lipid profile of deficient Artemia strains, taking advantage of the indiscriminate filter-feeding behaviour of Artemia.
Applying simple methods lipophilic compounds can be easily incorporated into the Artemia before being offered as a prey (see chapter 4.4.). A number of other compounds also appear to be variable from strain to strain: nutritional components such as total amount of free amino acids, pigments (canthaxanthin), vitamin C, minerals and trace elements, as well as contamination with chemicals such as pesticides and heavy metals. In most cases these variations are not strain specific, but just correspond to different production conditions. Despite this, their effects on larviculture success are usually far less significant.

From what I have read here not all brine shrimp are created equal but food source for them still seems to be the determining factor on how much nutrition can actually be obtained.Good article thanks!

 

I agree on variences from strain to strain and batch to batch.
However, as most people (but not all) on this continent use cysts from the Great Salt Lake, the range is as stated in the table 4.41.
Those results are using corn and soy powder as food, but if you use spirulina powder mixed with Algamac 3050 powder as food, the overall figures are much better. Then too as mentioned, they can be further increased by enrichment of an appropriate enrichment, gut loaded.
I see too many people in the hobby using foods like yeast and bran flour which are fine if you just want to grow them but their specific body nutrient content is too low. What they save in cheap food is negated by an inferior product.
Spirulina is an excellent food to use and at about $10/lb from BSD it's economical too.
Mix the powder in water in a blender for two minutes and store in the refrigerator, using as needed. Multiple feedings work much better than larger less frequent feedings.
You can set up a drip doser for food with an air pump, fine air flow valve, rigid air lines, 2L pop bottle, and flex air line tubing which works much better than just dosing multiple times.