Easy Summer Brine Shrimp

[aarhud]

I picked up a tip a while back that I finally tried this summer. A fellow hobbyist told me that he discards his brine shrimp hatch water into a glass container outside. The shrimp grow out and you get various sizes.

I filled a 12" cube tank with roughly 3-4 gallons of salt water and then added my waste brine shrimp water. I used waste water from my reef tank. I have been dumping my brine shrimp hatchery water outside for several weeks now and the tank is full of various sized shrimp. I have not added any kind of food. There is algae covering the glass walls and a few bugs/leaves make it into the tank.

If you do not have a ton of fish to feed, this is a neat little trick to avoid having to hatch brine shrimp daily. I am using the shrimp to feed killifish so it does not take much.

I'm thinking about trying a powdered algae to feed and increasing the container size.

Just wanted to share this.

 

[larryl]

That's a good tip - what kind of outdoor temps are you having?

 

[rasmusW]

cool. thanks for sharing.
i need to start experimenting with some of these live food cultures. so far i have only been scooping mosquito larvae from my outdoor tank.

-r

 

[aarhud]

That's a good tip - what kind of outdoor temps are you having?

Temps have been everywhere from 80-95+.

cool. thanks for sharing.
i need to start experimenting with some of these live food cultures. so far i have only been scooping mosquito larvae from my outdoor tank.

-r

I feed mosquito larva too. But with the high heat, I am overly cautious about not letting them develop and so I end up dumping a lot of them on the ground.

 

[yukondog]

Put them in the fridge, that way they don't morph and you can finish collecting later when your ready. Sometimes I put them in the fridge before collecting it slows them way down and makes collecting easier.

 

[Mike Wise]

I bet your 'better half' just loves you for this - if you have one!

 

[yukondog]

No, no more dead things in the house unless it's field dressed, she hit the roof when she found a dead fox and 2 coons in the freezer.
I have 2 shops that have the bulk of my tanks and a fridge in one of them where I do all the collecting and freezing.

 

[aarhud]

No, no more dead things in the house unless it's field dressed, she hit the roof when she found a dead fox and 2 coons in the freezer.
I have 2 shops that have the bulk of my tanks and a fridge in one of them where I do all the collecting and freezing.

I keep a few frozen mallards in the freezer for dog training. I consider myself lucky that my wife puts up with that, so I'll keep fish critters out of the fridge haha!

 

[yukondog]

She doesn't mind as long as the hide is off, well maybe not the fox.