Adding Vitachem to Baby Brine Shrimp Hatchery

[Andrew Puhr]

I am hatching Baby Brine to use for my baby axolotls and livebearers and wanted to see if its possible or risky to add some Vitachem to the brine shrimp hatchery while they eggs are hatching as a way to enhance or gut load the brine shrimp or if that would have adverse affects on the hatch or survival of the shrimp. 

[TOtrees]

I think freshy hatched bbs are about as nutrition-packed as you're going to get. And I'm not even sure they are able to feed within the first 1-2 days of hatching, ie I think they survive off a sort of yolk sack at first. 

Also, vitachem isn't really consumed by the food/prey that fish eat, but the food is more sort of bathed or dipped in it. Eg with a flake or pellet food that comes out of the package dry, and a few drops will be readily absorbed, and won't be immediately lost when dropped into the tank so it ends up in the fish. That's very different from putting a few drops into a half gallon or whatever bbs hatcher. Most of the vitachem will go out with the hatching water when you filter/strain/separate your bbs. 

Have you thought about culturing daphnia? I feed small live daphnia to my dart frog tadpoles (and many fish babies also) and they do really well on it. Those you could selectively gut load if you wished. I don't, since their diet is already pretty nutritious (spirulina powder + chick pea and rice flours). 

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 9/18/2023 at 12:48 PM, TOtrees said:

And I'm not even sure they are able to feed within the first 1-2 days of hatching, ie I think they survive off a sort of yolk sack at first.

According to this page on Seneye's website (the first source I found), brine shrimp don't even have a mouth until their second instar, after their first molt. So they couldn't eat anything even if they wanted to:

"Newly hatched brine shrimp hatch with no mouth or anus and live off their highly nutritious yolk sac, this period is known as instar 1, after approximately twelve hours the nauplii take on their first molt and develop a mouth, anus and a basic intestinal tract, this is known as instar 2."