Baby Brine Shrimp - How much do you feed / not overfeed?

[The Goatee]

I ordered the Ziss hatchery and Co-op eggs. How many baby brine shrimp can be added per tank / per gallon? I am not sure how to estimate feeding in my context. I don’t want to overfeed when I try my first hatches.

For my tanks, I’ve presently got three 20 gallon community tanks, a 10 gallon community, three 5.5s, and two 2.5s with juvenile female betta (moving to 5.5s soon).

I want to be sure I don’t overfeed any tank but also try to minimize leftovers from a hatch. Just not sure how the standard 2 liter and the hatched shrimp portion out.

[Fish Folk]

5 minutes ago, The Goatee said:

I ordered the Ziss hatchery and Co-op eggs. How many baby brine shrimp can be added per tank / per gallon? I am not sure how to estimate feeding in my context. I don’t want to overfeed when I try my first hatches.

For my tanks, I’ve presently got three 20 gallon community tanks, a 10 gallon community, three 5.5s, and two 2.5s with juvenile female betta (moving to 5.5s soon).

I want to be sure I don’t overfeed any tank but also try to minimize leftovers from a hatch. Just not sure how the standard 2 liter and the hatched shrimp portion out.

Good questions!

Ill try to explain what we do, but look for a variety of feedback.

When we hatch brine shrimp, we “wash” the shrimp—essentially diluting the salt / brine water into fresh water, either from a tank or from the tap.

This process looks different for each aquarist who does it, but what we do is either (1) pour the weed hole hatchery out through a fine brine shrimp net, and then dunk the shrimp into a 1/2 gal of fresh water, or, (2) draw out settled shrimp with brine into 10-ml syringe with long airline attached, and squirt the shrimp + brine into a 1/2 gal container with freshwater. The first method gets all the capsules (unless you have a valve on the hatchery bottom) while the second method gets a bit more salt, but very little shells.

Once in the freshwater, shrimp tend to move toward light, and / or settle to the bottom. Drawing 10 ml. from _this_ is how I’ll estimate my answers to your question...

20 ml / 10 gal is plenty. (2 ml / 1 gal)

Remember that baby brine shrimp are excellent for baby fish, but for mature fish they are lacking in well-balanced nutrition if that is the _only_ food you feed. I definitely feed BBS to all tanks, but only focus on it for baby fish, or fish I’m getting ready for breeding.   

[The Goatee]

4 hours ago, Fish Folk said:

Good questions!

Ill try to explain what we do, but look for a variety of feedback.

When we hatch brine shrimp, we “wash” the shrimp—essentially diluting the salt / brine water into fresh water, either from a tank or from the tap.

This process looks different for each aquarist who does it, but what we do is either (1) pour the weed hole hatchery out through a fine brine shrimp net, and then dunk the shrimp into a 1/2 gal of fresh water, or, (2) draw out settled shrimp with brine into 10-ml syringe with long airline attached, and squirt the shrimp + brine into a 1/2 gal container with freshwater. The first method gets all the capsules (unless you have a valve on the hatchery bottom) while the second method gets a bit more salt, but very little shells.

Once in the freshwater, shrimp tend to move toward light, and / or settle to the bottom. Drawing 10 ml. from _this_ is how I’ll estimate my answers to your question...

20 ml / 10 gal is plenty. (2 ml / 1 gal)

Remember that baby brine shrimp are excellent for baby fish, but for mature fish they are lacking in well-balanced nutrition if that is the _only_ food you feed. I definitely feed BBS to all tanks, but only focus on it for baby fish, or fish I’m getting ready for breeding.   

Thanks for the very detailed reply. This gives me at least one idea on how to proceed with the first hatch. I do have a pretty good size batch of guppy fry. Also some platy fish I’d like to see breed. If nothing else, I figured the BBS would be a fun thing to rotate in feeding between flakes, bloodworms, spirulina, and daphnia.

[StevesFishTanks]

I think if you rinse them it's nearly impossible to overdose bbs

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 6/3/2021 at 1:44 AM, StevesFishTanks said:

I think if you rinse them it's nearly impossible to overdose bbs

I know this an old thread, but geez, I hope you're right. I just fed out a lot of BBS into my three tanks (though I did rinse them first!). I was scheduled for water changes tomorrow anyway, but yeesh, too many!