What Are Brine Shrimp? A Detailed Guide to Breeding Techniques

Recently a friend asked, what are brine shrimp? Are they shrimp? Nowadays many friends like to keep ornamental fish to add vitality to their homes, and brine shrimp are one of the better live foods, with very high nutritional value. Brine shrimp are actually not shrimp, but creatures of other families. Below let us learn about brine shrimp breeding techniques.

I. What Are Brine Shrimp?

Brine shrimp are not shrimp. Their precise classification is various members under the class Branchiopoda - subclass Sarsostraca - order Anostraca. This large order contains roughly 300 or more species, which actually means the brine shrimp we usually feed are not all the same species.

When ordinary ornamental fish hobbyists use brine shrimp to feed fish, they mostly buy brine shrimp eggs, hatch them, and feed them directly. Newly hatched brine shrimp nauplii contain large amounts of protein and unsaturated fatty acids, and are a premium nutritious live food for ornamental fish.

II. Brine Shrimp Breeding Techniques

1. Prepare the breeding equipment

Brine shrimp breeding requires almost no equipment. They can survive in environments with very low oxygen content, so aeration for oxygen supply is generally unnecessary. In the high-temperature summer season, the dissolved oxygen content in water is relatively low. If the breeding density is high, leftover bait after feeding can sometimes spoil and cause severe oxygen deficiency in the water. At this point an air pump can be used to aerate and supplement oxygen, but brine shrimp have very weak swimming ability, so do not create too strong a water flow when aerating, otherwise they can only drift with the current and cannot feed on their own. Their range of temperature tolerance is also extremely wide; they can survive just as well in salt water under ice, and in summer at temperatures as high as 40 degrees they will not die in large numbers (if there is oxygen deficiency at high temperature, only a small number will die). Generally, to save on costs, there is no need to add heating. They can also tolerate high ammonia and high pollution, so no filtration equipment is needed under home breeding conditions.

2. Specific hatching method

Brine shrimp eggs are generally stored refrigerated. Before hatching, they should be placed dry at room temperature for about a week in advance, otherwise the hatching rate will be lower. For small-scale hatching, a small container that is narrow at the bottom and wide at the top can be used as a hatchery, filled with lightly salted water. The water used for hatching is just the opposite of the water used for breeding; use very dilute seawater, roughly half seawater and half freshwater, for the highest hatching rate. Before use it should be boiled for sterilization to prevent microorganisms from getting in. Install an air inlet at the bottom of the container and aerate gently so that bubbles rise slowly from the bottom, but the aeration amount must not be too large. If the water temperature can be maintained at 20 to 30 degrees, the hatching rate will be better, and lower temperatures will not have a serious impact. For brine shrimp eggs from different places of origin, the time for the first batch of nauplii to hatch out will differ somewhat, roughly between one day and one and a half days. At this point aeration should be stopped, and the water left to stand for ten to twenty minutes to let it settle and separate into layers. The nauplii will swim in the middle layer of the water, the empty egg shells will float on the surface, and dead eggs and unhatched eggs will sink to the bottom. Use a pipette to draw out the middle-layer water containing the nauplii and pour it directly into the breeding tank. After that, you can also add lightly salted water to the hatchery and continue aerating for another day or two, and more nauplii will continue to hatch.

3. Scientific bait feeding

The best food for brine shrimp is the planktonic algae in seawater. After sunlight exposure, large amounts of algae will naturally grow in seawater for the brine shrimp to feed on, so under normal circumstances no feeding is needed. But when the breeding density is relatively high, other tiny particulate organic matter can also be supplemented to increase the brine shrimp population. Under home breeding conditions, organic wastewater can be continuously added to the water, such as wastewater from a protein skimmer, rice-washing water, or milk or yeast powder (after dissolving in water). But when supplementing this wastewater with its very high organic content, one should note the principle of always preferring less over excess, controlling it to the degree that the water quality does not turn bad or turbid. If excessive, the water quality will seriously deteriorate, and the brine shrimp will likewise not be able to withstand it and will die in large numbers.

4. Harvest at the right time

Brine shrimp nauplii can mature after more than ten days of feeding. Most adult brine shrimp are female, with few or even no males. Mature female brine shrimp all carry egg sacs, and at this time their nutrition is at its highest, so they can be harvested.