Hatching Brine Shrimp

[goldenpigeon]

what is the general hatch rate you get merrilyn?

[goldenpigeon]

also do you keep light on them to get them to hatch?

[Merrilyn]

Hard to say David, but at least 80% maybe even more. Yes, I leave the tank light on all night to increase the hatch rate. Mine sit in an 18 inch tank half filled with heated water. I can fit three bottles in there, and they all stay warm.

[Ben]

In the past when growing brineshrimp i tried a lot of kinds of salts (must be a chef thing!) But the best for actually growing brineshrimp was marine salt used for salt water tanks. It has all the good trace elements and worked a treat!
I believe the salt can be more denser when hatching brineshrimp than when actually growing them.
But play around and find what works best for you.
A density reading of 1.250 worked for me.

HTH
Ben

Oh Junior, a couple of times when the sun was out in Melbourne i started them in the morning out in the sun. Got a very good hatch rate!

[Brian]

Just a side note, there is a very easy way to harvest the shrimp. You can go and buy the San Francisco Bay Brine Shrimp Hatchery. I find that if you hatch the shrimp the standard way which is the inverted bottle, you can just dump all the contents into the hatchery and the shrimp just swim into a little bottle for you to just open up and dump into the water for your fry.

The way it works is that the shrimp are attracted to bright lights. The hatchery is all black with a clear medicine bottle kinda thing. You put it into a little reservoir on the top of the hatchery and the shrimp swim through a little hole into the bottle, cause they are naturally attracted by the white light. I found this to be a very cool investment if you are lazy, and it comes with a couple of bags of eggs too. I used it when I was breeding bettas and such.

[jwight]

If anybody can please show a picture of their hatchery it might better explain your instructions. thanks.