Sea Monkey Trial 2

[tango]

Hi,

Bought 2 different brand of BBS eggs, small bottle, each cost about $8. One from Y618, one from C328.
Bought another small pack of Red Sea marine salt

Put 1 table spoon of marine salt into 1 litre of water, do all the aeration and wait 18hours, and this is my observation:

a) a layer of particles float on the surface of the water, I presume those are the eggs shell.

b) On the base of the hatching container, I see small brown particles spread evenly out.

Are these particles the sea monkey? The problem is they don't move, unlike those in the LFS which is so active. What went wrong? Please advise.

tango.

[shaman]

Hey bro,
You can see the BBS moving around under light. If you wanna collect them, just shine torch light at one corner then suck them out with a syringe.

[stormhawk]

If they don't move means they are just the eggs that are still floating about. Give them a few more hours. Most probably the nauplii are just starting to hatch out.

The nauplii should be very pale in colour and jerking about in the water. Stop the aeration and use a torchlight. They are attracted to bright lights. If you observe nothing moving, that means they have not hatched or the eggs are not good.

Since you mentioned that you used 1 tablespoon of marine salt, I believe the hatching salinity may not be high enough. Most of the time it is trial and error to get the correct amount. I use 1 heaping soup spoon and half of another soup spoon's amount for a litre of water. Mostly its just approximation for me but it works.

[tango]

Yes. Finally I saw something move inside the water. little dots gathering together and moving from one end to the other from my shadow.

But one question, why are they so small, look more like sand particle, when the one sold in the LFS are so big.

How to make them big? Feed them? how long to take to make them as big as the one in LFS, at least 3mm big?

http://photobucket.com/albums/a119/t...onkeys---1.jpg

tango

[|squee|]

Those sold at LFSes are adult brine shrimp!

The ones you hatched are baby brine shrimps, thus the acronym BBS.

[tango]

Anybody know how long does it take for a BBS (baby brine shrimp) to change to a ABS (adult brine shrimp) ?

tango

[stormhawk]

They should take a few weeks to reach adult size but you will need to house them in larger quarters. I would not try to raise them to adult size. Too much work. You will need to feed the BBS with particulate foods meant for filter feeders and this will definitely foul up the water. Yeast is a possible food source but too much can cause problems in a small container.

You're better off hatching the small BBS for feeding to small fish or young fry, and buying the adults from the store for feeding larger fish. Keeping them alive is as easy as using an airline to aerate their container.