AllFishNoBrakes

So strange. I store mine in the freezer and haven’t had any issues. I’ve gone through 7 or 8 cans and they’ve all been great. Just to make sure, 1 tablespoon of aquarium salt per 1 liter of water in your hatchery, correct? I’m wondering if the rock salt you’re using has something to do with it? I’d get some basic aquarium salt (I know, should be the same thing) and see if it makes a difference.

I don’t use a heater. Instead, I use a lamp with an incandescent bulb. Brine shrimp questions running rampant on the forum today! If anyone wants to see how to build my stand check out the “show off your brine shrimp hatchery” post.

So strange. What brand of eggs are you using? How old are they? How are you storing them? I was fortunate enough to start with ACO eggs and have never had this problem.

Alright here we go. All pvc pieces and elbows are 1/2”. Stand is 18” tall. ~6 3/4” square on top and bottom. -8 90° “side outlet” elbows. (Used to make the square on top and bottom as well as support/connect the legs) -8 90° elbows. (Used to create the notch to hold brine shrimp sieve) -1 10’ piece of 1/2” pvc. 1. Start by cutting (4) ~18” pieces of 1/2” pvc. These will be your legs or columns for the stand. Remember that all pvc connections have some wiggle room, assuming you don’t glue them, so you can probably get away with slightly smaller pieces if you’d like. 2. Cut (8) 4” pieces of pvc. 3. Using 4 of your 90° side outlet elbows and 4 of your 4” pieces, create a square with all the third outlets on the elbow facing up. 4. Repeat step 3 with the remaining 90° side outlet elbows and 4” pvc pieces. 5. You now have a top and bottom square. 6. Insert your 18” pieces to connect the squares. 7. You now have a fully functioning Ziss brine shrimp hatchery stand! 8. If you’d like to make the notches for a brine shrimp sieve, continue to step 9. 9. Insert the Ziss brine shrimp hatchery into your stand. 10. Mark on the front legs/columns where you would like your notch to be. For my stand personally, the top piece is ~9” long, and the bottom piece is ~4” long. This leaves an ~2” adjustable notch for your sieve to sit. 11. Cut both front legs/columns of your stand to be equal. 12. Using 4 of your standard 90° elbows and small pvc pieces (utilize the front legs you cut out) create a “U” shape. Another way to think of this is: from the top right corner of your stand, you want your first 90° elbow going from top to the back of the stand. The second elbow takes that turn to the back a little further, and then down again. The third elbow goes a little further down, and then starts coming back to the front. Final elbow continues to the front of the stand and then down, connecting to the front leg again. (This was somewhat difficult to type as I’m a visual learner. If you’re like me, there’s pictures below. The last picture showcase what the “U”s look like) 13. Repeat step 12 for the left side. 14. connect one “U” to the left side and the other to the right. 15. Voila! You now have a stand that can hold your brine shrimp sieve! Fun tip, the notch you created can swivel in and out to hold whatever size sieve you would like to use. 16. No pvc cement/glue required. I like that I can adjust it should I ever need to, and if your top square ever gets loose you can just squeeze it back together. I’ve been using mine for a few years without a single issue.

I’m away from home at the moment but will get a parts list! I love this thing and recommend anyone who has a Ziss hatchery make one. The more people I can help the better.

@jwcarlson here’s what I personally do. -Drain the hatchery through the sieve. I try to get every baby brine shrimp I can without getting the separated eggs into the sieve. -Rinse under tap water. You don’t have to do this, but I like to. -I take a shallow, square Tupperware and fill up a 20 ml syringe 6 times with tank water into that Tupperware. -Once the brine shrimp are rinsed, I put them in the tank water in the Tupperware. -From there I use that 20 ml syringe to fill the little ice cube trays. Once full that goes into the freezer. -Feed out the rest of the live brine shrimp to all applicable tanks. -Thaw the frozen brine shrimp to feed throughout the week. I use tank water to thaw however many little cubes I need. -Repeat as necessary!

@FLFishChik I wish I could take all the credit. @Cory made a video, and I’m pretty sure the stand itself was another members idea as the stand the hatchery comes with is terrible to drain with. I just added the modification to be able to hold the sieve!

As I wait for my shrimp tank to refill I couldn’t help but post my setup. If you’ve been around the forum you’ve probably already seen it, but it could help others.

I keep my Angels a couple of different ways. 6 started out in my 55 community tank, and they would form pairs and breed as they pleased. Yes, they get territorial and slightly aggressive towards the other Angels when they’re spawning, but that’s to be expected. Now, I have 4 Angels in the 55 gallon community tank, and the pair of specialty (Panda) Angels was moved to a separate tank to pair off and breed as raising those fry are more worth my time as I get a little more for them. Overall, I knew that Angels were cichlids and were gonna do cichlid things. They bicker every once in a while, but the 55 gives everyone enough space to chill out, even when the pair is breeding in there. Even the breeding pair when spawning don’t really care about the Cardinal Tetras and the Albino Cory’s. The Cardinals kinda stay on the other side of the tank and the Cory’s stay at the bottom so it has worked well in my experience. I like the 55 over the 40b strictly due to height as Angels are tall fish.

Thanks for the shout out @Up North! If anybody wants to see the set up just holler. I made my own stand out of pvc for the Ziss brine shrimp hatchery and modified it slightly to hold a brine shrimp sieve. Hands free harvesting!

For sure. The usb nano air pump gets turned down just a bit to where I like it. Keeps a nice, soft roll where everything is moving but isn’t violent. Other air pumps I’ve had to turn down a lot.

@jwcarlson I’ve never really thought about the chlorine gassing off sitting overnight. You’re probably right, though. The sole purpose that I let the hatchery sit overnight is that it works with my schedule. Get home from work, feed the fish, and set up the hatchery. The next morning, dump the eggs in before work. 36 hours later when I get home from work again it’s time to harvest. Simply just works with my schedule and I like the 36 hour hatch. Just checked and my lightbulb in the lamp is a 72 watt. I wouldn’t be concerned about feeding the dead ones. I literally freeze 90% of my hatch to be able to feed throughout the week. I fill up my little ice tray and throw that in the freezer. Whatever is left is fed live. I personally wouldn’t be concerned as I don’t believe it was disease or something like it that killed the baby brine.

Hey @jwcarlson. I hatch ACO baby brine shrimp once per week, and here’s what I do. -I use the Ziss Hatchery, filled up with water and do not dechlorinate. I’ve heard that the chlorine actually helps them hatch. -My water is suuuper soft, so I put the tiniest dash of baking soda in the water. Seriously, the tiniest little pinch. 2 tablespoons of Fritz Aquarium Salt. -USB nano air pump hooked up to the hatchery. I tone down the air with a valve a little bit so it’s just at a soft roll. -No heater. Instead, I use a clip on lamp with a fluorescent bulb pointed at the heater. Maybe about a foot away. The heat from the bulb takes the place of a heater. -I let the hatchery sit overnight to dissolve all the salt and equalize temperature. -The following morning I dump in 1 tablespoon of brine shrimp eggs. I let that go for 36 hours. -After the 36 hours is up I take down the lamp, turn off the air, and use a different little led clip on light to attract the bbs to the bottom. Let that sit for 5-10 minutes. -Bust out my brine shrimp sieve, open the valve, and harvest the brine shrimp! Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions!

I’m lucky in that my girlfriend already let me take over the entire house, lol. She’s trying to convince me to get another tank for “her” tank and I’m more like, let’s take this 10 gallon tank that will be empty soon and turn that into your tank, lol

Unfortunately, I’m out of both space and time to add anything more. As of now, my community tanks are cruising right along and I hatch and raise out of them what I can. Right now I’m growing out some Panda Angels and some Cory’s.

@Gannon Made up your mind on what you’re doing with it, or just snatching it up while it’s cheap?!

@Anjum I’ve never seen them put the lids on sale. Just the tanks. That being said, you could probably sign up via email for some generic coupons that you could use on the lid.

@Randy You’re now Vice President of ACO, but don’t have admin access on the forum?! Crazy. (All jokes and all love. Appreciate everything you do for us nerms!)

I run small ACO sponge filters in my tiny 2.5 gallon hatch and grow out tanks for fry and have never seen it. Doesn’t mean it has never happened, simply means I haven’t personally seen it with my eyes. If this happened to me, I would chalk it up to my inherited bad luck and consider it a freak accident. If it happened again then I would probably feel differently.

I’m no expert, but the puffer is looking great! Honestly, I’ve seen puffers at LFS’s that look like this one the day it arrived to you. Pretty cool to see you take them from what they were to where they are today.

@DaveO I don’t know the exact name and model. I bought it like 3 years ago on Amazon and have since sold that little setup to another fish keeper friend. Like @Tanked said, it was a fountain pump and I made sure it could push water to the height I needed it to.

I have enough other community tanks that it was fine for me to dedicate that tank to a species only. Personally, I think Pea Puffers are awesome. They have a ton of personality, “beg” for food like puppies, know who you are as the person that feeds them and see you coming, and I get the satisfaction of keeping a puffer (even better a group of them!) without having to worry about needing large tanks as they grow and grinding down their teeth. Also, doesn’t hurt for me to have a source of live food for them in the form of snails from the other community tanks. For me it just made a lot of sense all the way around. In my opinion it was totally worth it and that tank is one of, if not my favorite tank. It was also one of the last tanks I set up so I definitely used what I learned from previous tanks to “scape” it and have it look a little nicer. My Pea Puffer tank is in my bedroom as I knew it would be a tank I wanted to see a lot.

I haven’t used the ACO powerhead to do that, but before I had my Python I built this bad boy to pump water from buckets The biggest issue that I had to tackle was a pump that had enough power to lift the water, but not so much that it disturbed the tank too much. Plus, I have tanks at different levels on a rack so I needed a little less pressure for one row and a little more for the tanks on the next level above. I liked that this pump was adjustable to tackle whatever I needed, and it was a fun DIY project.

One of my 29’s has a group of Pea Puffers and the other one has 6 Albino Cory’s, a pair of Peacock Gudgeons, 4 Praecox Rainbows, 10 Glowlight Tetras, a few Marbled Hatchetfish, shrimp, and snails. 29’s are my favorite size as they’re small enough to easily maintain, but large enough to get a rad community going.

Hey @Dakotascott71. My personal belief is that you should be able to remove the HOB without issue. You’ll definitely lose some bacteria, but it’s not like you’d lose it all as your other filters hold bacteria, the glass, your substrate, decorations, wood, etc. all hold bacteria. Me personally, I would remove the HOB, and feed a little lighter for like a week, and then slowly increase to previous feeding levels to allow the bacteria to replicate and replace the minimal amount that will be lost by removing the HOB