Is it Possible to Feed Baby Brine Shrimp Too Often?

[Ben C.]

Hello!

As the title says, I'm raising up fish fry so I have baby brine hatching every day. It feels like a waste to hatch out just a tiny amount to sustain the few fry I have right now, so I always make some for my other tanks. They're happy as all can be eating it every day (and so is the hydra...), but am I keeping them on a permanent "cheat" day? I still feed veggies to my tetras to balance that out, but it's been about 3 days of straight baby brine and I'm wondering if I should cool the jets... thanks!

[CT_]

I don't have any evidence to say for sure it's okay but days to a couple weeks is surly fine.  Many people use a bbs heavy diet to trigger spawning.  There's a chance bbs are nutritionally incomplete but I think that's pretty low since babies grow up on it and aren't deformed.  Maybe "not deformed" is a low bar though.  If you want to feel safe you could add something else in a few hours later here and there.  Variety is always the safer option since determining if one food is "complete" is a pretty hard task.

[Bru]

Judging by the way Dean feeds his fishroom on youtube I’d say the answer is definitely no! lol (Just keep your water quality up) I see nothing wrong with spoiling the fish as long as you enjoy making more BBS.

I personally like to feed a variety of baby brine, powdered fry foods and have a culture of microworms. Since one batch of baby brine is more than I can feed my few tanks I just end up freezing them in mini ice cube trays and feeding them out over time to tanks with fry. (Just make sure you mark the trays as baby brine or someone might be having an interesting drink)

[Guppysnail]

I cut the recipe to 1 tsp of eqqs in the ziss.  It works great. I use a hobby Artemia sieve from Amazon to strain and rinse so it’s not affecting the water so much. I use the extra as a small treat for all my other tanks each day and still feed regular  diet just a bit less. For the fry I use bbs as every other feeding throughout the day. It seems to be working well but I’ve only been doing it for a few weeks. 
 

just a rounded teaspoon creates a lot of bbs.  

[BrineShrimp]

Has a seller of brine shrimp and many other diploid The Artemia franciscana (brine shrimp) are a pretty decent source of nutrition but very good for fry and some other smallish fish, I noticed with clown fish it really does help with starting the process of breeding. As a matter of fact, if you take the same wet weight of brine shrimp and compare it to the same wet weight of most flake foods, the protein levels are comparable. The problem is that people compare the dry weight statistics of flake or frozen foods, to the wet weight statistics of live brine shrimp. Live brine shrimp, however, can be gut loaded to make that food, weight for weight, higher in nutrition than most other food we use in our tanks. In addition, your fish will enjoy chasing down their prey, getting much needed exercise in the process. The most comprehensive writing on brine shrimp has been done for the United Nations with regards to aquaculture, an industry that makes extensive use of brine shrimp as a major part of the mariculture industry raising fish/shrimp etc for the food industry of the world.

Edited July 14, 2021 by BrineShrimp

[Ben C.]

On 7/13/2021 at 11:13 PM, CT_ said:

I don't have any evidence to say for sure it's okay but days to a couple weeks is surly fine.  Many people use a bbs heavy diet to trigger spawning.  There's a chance bbs are nutritionally incomplete but I think that's pretty low since babies grow up on it and aren't deformed.  Maybe "not deformed" is a low bar though.  If you want to feel safe you could add something else in a few hours later here and there.  Variety is always the safer option since determining if one food is "complete" is a pretty hard task.

"Not deformed" I love it 😂 yeah, my mantra so far has been variety is key, so I feed a huge blend of foods normally...I'll cut back on how much I hatch out and mix in my usual stuff for peace of mind.

[Ben C.]

On 7/14/2021 at 2:00 AM, Bru said:

Judging by the way Dean feeds his fishroom on youtube I’d say the answer is definitely no! lol (Just keep your water quality up) I see nothing wrong with spoiling the fish as long as you enjoy making more BBS.

I personally like to feed a variety of baby brine, powdered fry foods and have a culture of microworms. Since one batch of baby brine is more than I can feed my few tanks I just end up freezing them in mini ice cube trays and feeding them out over time to tanks with fry. (Just make sure you mark the trays as baby brine or someone might be having an interesting drink)

Thanks for the input, particularly the ice cube trays 😂 I've already taken over some of the fridge for frozen food...and some of a cabinet for microworms..I'm sure nobody will mind...right?

[Ben C.]

On 7/14/2021 at 3:35 AM, Guppysnail said:

I cut the recipe to 1 tsp of eqqs in the ziss.  It works great. I use a hobby Artemia sieve from Amazon to strain and rinse so it’s not affecting the water so much. I use the extra as a small treat for all my other tanks each day and still feed regular  diet just a bit less. For the fry I use bbs as every other feeding throughout the day. It seems to be working well but I’ve only been doing it for a few weeks. 
 

just a rounded teaspoon creates a lot of bbs.  

I'm realizing the sheer amount of BBS it makes now...I have the sieve too! I got it because I really don't do any water changes - and figured the salt would build up sometime, even if years from now...makes it that much easier. Plus my water is already so hard. Thanks for the input!

[Ben C.]

On 7/14/2021 at 6:29 AM, BrineShrimp said:

Has a seller of brine shrimp and many other diploid The Artemia franciscana (brine shrimp) are a pretty decent source of nutrition but very good for fry and some other smallish fish, I noticed with clown fish it really does help with starting the process of breeding. As a matter of fact, if you take the same wet weight of brine shrimp and compare it to the same wet weight of most flake foods, the protein levels are comparable. The problem is that people compare the dry weight statistics of flake or frozen foods, to the wet weight statistics of live brine shrimp. Live brine shrimp, however, can be gut loaded to make that food, weight for weight, higher in nutrition than most other food we use in our tanks. In addition, your fish will enjoy chasing down their prey, getting much needed exercise in the process. The most comprehensive writing on brine shrimp has been done for the United Nations with regards to aquaculture, an industry that makes extensive use of brine shrimp as a major part of the mariculture industry raising fish/shrimp etc for the food industry of the world.

Thank you for a very detailed response with a very apt username! Thanks for clarifying. I have heard of gut loading, such as with spirulina, for herbivores, and may have to check it out. My brother keeps a marine tank with a couple young tangs that may appreciate that anyway...

[tolstoy21]

On 7/13/2021 at 10:16 PM, Ben C. said:

Hello!

As the title says, I'm raising up fish fry so I have baby brine hatching every day. It feels like a waste to hatch out just a tiny amount to sustain the few fry I have right now, so I always make some for my other tanks. They're happy as all can be eating it every day (and so is the hydra...), but am I keeping them on a permanent "cheat" day? I still feed veggies to my tetras to balance that out, but it's been about 3 days of straight baby brine and I'm wondering if I should cool the jets... thanks!

I don’t think you can feed it too often, but you can definitely feed too much at a time.

I feed  it almost exclusively to small fry that will take it, until they are large enough and willing to eat crushed flake and nano pellets. Then I feed it along with that food.

If I don’t have a ton of fry, I’ll hatch 1/4 to 1/2 tsp a day. Anything left over I’ll feed to adults in other tanks. 

Edited July 14, 2021 by tolstoy21

[Ben C.]

On 7/14/2021 at 4:31 PM, tolstoy21 said:

I don’t think you can feed it too often, but you can definitely feed too much at a time.

I feed  it almost exclusively to small fry that will take it, until they are large enough and willing to eat crushed flake and nano pellets. Then I feed it along with that food.

If I don’t have a ton of fry, I’ll hatch 1/4 to 1/2 tsp a day. Anything left over I’ll feed to adults in other tanks. 

Thanks for the response! Yeah I'm definitely going to tone down how much I'm hatching - with how much was coming out, it was enough to feed my two tanks full of adults 3 hefty feedings, at 24 hours, 36 hours, and 48 hours after hatching...I've been mixing hikari first bites between brine feedings, and will hopefully move onto the Co-Ops fry food soon.

[Guppysnail]

On 7/14/2021 at 10:13 PM, Ben C. said:

Thanks for the response! Yeah I'm definitely going to tone down how much I'm hatching - with how much was coming out, it was enough to feed my two tanks full of adults 3 hefty feedings, at 24 hours, 36 hours, and 48 hours after hatching...I've been mixing hikari first bites between brine feedings, and will hopefully move onto the Co-Ops fry food soon.

If you are keeping them that long I was adding prime (so they didn’t die of ammonia poison) and vitachem after 24 hours HOPING to vitamin load them a bit and spirulina powder. Not sure if it does help but I was in the same boat and hatching too many for all my tanks to consume before I just cut the recipe back to a ROUND TEASPOON. Im new to bbs too only a few weeks so my efforts may have been ridiculous but hey worth a shot.  

[Ben C.]

On 7/14/2021 at 9:47 PM, Guppysnail said:

If you are keeping them that long I was adding prime (so they didn’t die of ammonia poison) and vitachem after 24 hours HOPING to vitamin load them a bit and spirulina powder. Not sure if it does help but I was in the same boat and hatching too many for all my tanks to consume before I just cut the recipe back to a ROUND TEASPOON. Im new to bbs too only a few weeks so my efforts may have been ridiculous but hey worth a shot.  

I didn't think of the vitachem, that's a great idea! Definitely going to try adding the prime too. Thanks!