Simple advice needed on brine shrimp care

[Yossu]

@MaloK Thanks for that, didn't know you could get ones so small!

 

[JohnnyReb]

Once a week, I hatch out a batch of baby brine shrimp to feed my fish. A month or so ago, I decided to see if I could keep some alive as pets. I siphoned off some babies and put them in a plastic cup. They have grown nicely, and are around 1cm long. One of them even looks like it's carrying eggs. Each week, I add a few babies, so the population is of quite mixed size.

I'm interested to know how I can care for them, to keep them alive and healthy as long as possible. I know they only live a few months, but can always add more babies to keep the population up.

So far, I've topped up the water when it has evaporated, but as I'm adding the brine that I hatch the eggs in, I'm worried that I may end up raising the salinity too high, as (if I understand correctly) evaporation leaves most of the mineral content of the water behind. Trouble is that syphoning water off is very difficult, as I can't avoid syphoning shrimp with it. Could do with some advice as to how to keep the water quality up.

I've been feeding them on dried yeast, which makes the water a bit milky. I also tried rubbing two algae pellets together above the water, so algae dust fell in, which would hopefully dissolve to be small enough for them to eat. I have no idea how much I should feed, nor if they need anything else.

Am I doing this right? Any tips you can give to do it better? I've ordered a small aquarium (2 litres) to give them a bigger home, so don't worry about the cramped conditions in the cup. They should be moving to more spacious premises next week.

Any and all advice welcome. Please bear in mind that I'm doing this for entertainment (mine, not the shrimp!), and am not expecting to go into large-scale shrimp farming! My only aim here is to have an interesting tank.

Thanks in advance.

I tried keeping them in a 2.5 gallon tank and they lived a few days and crashed, I think it takes a lot of water changes to keep the water fresh.

 

[Yossu]

I tried keeping them in a 2.5 gallon tank and they lived a few days and crashed, I think it takes a lot of water changes to keep the water fresh.

Well mine were in a regular plastic cup for about 5 or 6 weeks before I moved them! They were doing fine in there. As I said, I think the problem was the temperature.

I have some hatching at the moment. When they are ready, I'm going to put some in a plastic cup as before, put it on top of the main tank as before, and keep an eye on the temperature.

 

[JohnnyReb]

what did you add to the water that 5 weeks?

 

[Yossu]

what did you add to the water that 5 weeks?

Basically nothing. When I first did it, I just syphoned some of the water and shrimp into the cup, then each week I topped up the cup with some of the water from that week's hatching. This of course brought more babies along, so the cup got quite busy.

Apart form dropping some grains of yeast, and scraping two algae pellets together to get some dust into the water, I didn't do anything to it.

However, the nice news is that when I came to empty out the tank just now, I found one shrimp still alive. I have moved him/her into a brand new plastic cup () which is now sitting on top of the main tank where the previous one was. I have a thermometer in it, and will be interested to see what the temperature is in there. I also have some eggs that should be hatched in the morning, so he/she can have some baby friends to play with.

 

[JohnnyReb]

TY