Brine shrimp help, please.

[TropicalNewbie442]

I've hatched some brine shrimp in a 250ml hatchery. The instructions said half a tea spoon but I miss read and put a tea spoon of eggs in. 24 hours have passed and I can see shrimp have hatched.
But could more hatch in another 24 hours? Or once some hatch they all hatch?
Just wondering if putting to much in can cause it to take longer for all brine shrimp that'll hatch to hatch.

 

[Archerfish]

Yes, some will continue to hatch but the yield will be less over a couple of days. Don't worry about the overage of shrimp eggs. We've all done that. The question is can you use that many without overfeeding the fish or fouling your tank? If not, try to raise some of them to a larger size.

 

[GaryE]

You can also freeze excess ones, although that may not be worth the trouble.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

There is a more important issue. it is essential to feed BBS as soon after they hatch as possible. From the instand they hatch they are using up their nutrient supply to grow. One of the best and easiest to understand articles you can find on hatching and feeding BBS was written by Dr. Rob Tooben a marine biologist for reef keepers. Bear in mind that BBS are BBS no matter to what you feed them. I happened to correspon with Dr. Toonen years back after i quotes from the below study on a site and some moron decided he knew more than practicing Ph.D. in the field did.

If you are hatching BBS or using adult brine for your fish, this article is a must read. Here is one quick quote to get folks interested.

When Artemia nauplii first hatch (Instar I), they do not have a complete gut, and it is not until they develop to Instar II that the baby brine start to feed. The time of development to Instar II depends on a variety of factors (most importantly temperature, but also salinity), but occurs within 6 to 30 hours after hatching. At 28°C (roughly 82°F) it takes about 8 hours for the newly hatched nauplii to begin feeding, and as the temperature drops, that time becomes much longer. As soon as the nauplii hatch, they begin to digest their yolk and become less nutritious with time after hatching, however, once they reach the second instar, they can begin to feed, and you can enhance their nutritional value by feeding them

Unless we feed fast after hatching, the BBS lose all of the nutritional value. After that to make BBS abd later adult brine they need to be enriched, aka fed. There are food for enriching brine for both FW and SW. But with BBS after they shed their first shell they may be too large for some tiny fry to eat. Anyway red for yourself.

https://reefs.com/magazine/aquarium...ive-foods-for-the-coral-reef-aquarium-part-2/

I should say that about 18 or 19 years ago I messed with hatching BBS for angel fry. Too many fry, too much effort and I stopped. Today I feed frozen brine shrimp which are full of nutrician. I also keep some frozen BBS cubes in the freezer, but they are too expensive. Instead I feed my fry (and very small fish) frozen cylcops and rotifers with a bit of frozen daphnia added.

 

[GaryE]

My interpetation of that is that we have a few hours to feed the shrimp to our fish, after the shrimp hatch. I hatch mine in small lots, and feed a lot of fish with them. If I want to feed twice, I hatch twice.

If I feed them to the fish 2 or 3 hours after hatching, I see no problem. They may not be optimal, but they are extremely good food anyway. I hatch mine at 22c with only sunlight as lighting, and they do very well. I've only been using window light for a few months, as that's how long I've had the window, but I've hatched bbs daily for most days over the past 30 years. They are excellent food once you get the timing down.

Starting to use bbs was one of the things that really allowed me to grow my hobby. It was nicer when they cost $7 a pound over $80 CAD now, but they are still worth buying by the pound. I'm using Chinese cysts with the best hatch rate I have ever encountered.