Please Help * hatching brine shrimp

[Justin V1]

I watched the video twice now with Cory and Dean on hatching brine shrimp, and I purchased all the items needed from AC.

I’m now two rounds into it without success. This last attempt has been going for 72 hours without a single egg hatching.

Not sure what I’m missing or doing wrong, any help would be very much appreciated.

[lefty o]

please explain to us exactly what you are doing start to finish so we can maybe find the problem.

[Justin V1]

2- TSP of Coop salt in the Ziss mixed with tap water

1- scoop of coop brine shrimp eggs

set air bubbles so the eggs are not clumping on surface, rigid tube to the bottom

led light shining on Ziss container

 

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 6/15/2024 at 2:08 PM, Justin V1 said:

2- TSP of Coop salt in the Ziss mixed with tap water

1- scoop of coop brine shrimp eggs

set air bubbles so the eggs are not clumping on surface, rigid tube to the bottom

led light shining on Ziss container

 

Hmm, that sounds like it should work.  What temperature is the room? What temperature is the tap water going into the Ziss hatchery? There's nothing weird about your tap water?

Is the air flow quite vigorous? I found that I needed to keep things moving but only gently bubbling; if I overdid it, it seemed to kill off some of the brine shrimp.

How are you harvesting? Are you going straight into a cup or straining through a seive or brine shrimp net?

[Justin V1]

I didn’t check the water temp, or air temp, guessing it would be mid 70’s.

My tap water is pretty hard, high 7’s PH and GH is on the high side. I use coop test strips and it’s been a while since I checked my tap water.

I’ve not had a single egg hatch, but I bought a sieve for brine shrimp

I was planning on reducing air flow once the eggs started hatching. I had it set so that the eggs wouldn’t clump on the surface.

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 6/15/2024 at 8:08 PM, Justin V1 said:

I didn’t check the water temp, or air temp, guessing it would be mid 70’s.

My tap water is pretty hard, high 7’s PH and GH is on the high side. I use coop test strips and it’s been a while since I checked my tap water.

I’ve not had a single egg hatch, but I bought a sieve for brine shrimp

I was planning on reducing air flow once the eggs started hatching. I had it set so that the eggs wouldn’t clump on the surface.

I just re-read this thread, because I was stumped, and saw that you use two teaspoons of ACO Easy Brine Shrimp Salt. How much water are you using? I fill my Ziss hatchery to about an inch-and-a-half to two-inches below the rim, which works out to about 1.75 liters, give or take, and add two tablespoons of the ACO salt. Are you using a lot less water? It may just be that your salinity is too low.

[Justin V1]

Just started batch 3, water temp is mid 80’s.

Here’s the water level

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 6/16/2024 at 11:34 AM, Justin V1 said:

Just started batch 3, water temp is mid 80’s.

Here’s the water level

How much salt did you use? I'll have to do some follow-up research, so grain of salt here, but I sort of remember hearing that baby brine shrimp die or won't hatch about 86°F. I have a mini-heater in mine set to 81°F and harvest at about the 24 hour mark.

[Justin V1]

That’s very helpful, thank you. What kind of heater are you using

i used two TBS of Coop BS salt

[tike]

On 6/15/2024 at 11:08 AM, Justin V1 said:

2- TSP of Coop salt in the Ziss mixed with tap water

1- scoop of coop brine shrimp eggs

set air bubbles so the eggs are not clumping on surface, rigid tube to the bottom

led light shining on Ziss container

 

Is that teaspoons? In my ziss i use at LEAST 2 tablespoons.

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 6/16/2024 at 4:27 PM, Justin V1 said:

That’s very helpful, thank you. What kind of heater are you using

i used two TBS of Coop BS salt

I use this heater from Amazon. Okay, so yesterday's post of 2 teaspoons of salt was a typo, right? You're using 2 tablespoons. "One scoop" of ACO brine shrimp eggs is the scoop that came with the eggs, right? I think that's a one tablespoon scoop, so that should be fine. Let's see what it looks like tomorrow, I guess, and go from there.  Good luck!

[lefty o]

teaspoon was hopefully a typo, if not, it would likely be a major part of the problem.

[Justin V1]

Yes, good catch guys, that was a typo, I’m using tablespoon

i just went to Petco and bought an adhesive strip thermometer and a small heater. It’s suppose to stabilize temp at 78.

we shall see how it goes this time

thanks for the help!

[Justin V1]

So here we are again, 36 hours into the third attempt to hatch and still no success.

I’m not sure what to do from here. The heater has maintained the water temp in the high 70’s/low 80’s, and I’ve done everything else I’ve seen and read to do. The only common denominator at this point is the tap water.

[sumplkrum]

Hard water wouldn't be a problem ... does your tap water have chloramine or chlorine?
Maybe a bit of dechlorinator in the water would solve the problem? - The recipe sounds like you're doing it correctly.

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 6/18/2024 at 10:17 AM, Justin V1 said:

So here we are again, 36 hours into the third attempt to hatch and still no success.

I’m not sure what to do from here. The heater has maintained the water temp in the high 70’s/low 80’s, and I’ve done everything else I’ve seen and read to do. The only common denominator at this point is the tap water.

I'm sorry to hear that. The only other thing I can think of is that at temperatures in the upper 70s to low 80s, 36 hours sounds like too long to hatch them, but they shouldn't not hatch in that time, they'd just be bigger (and maybe fewer). I have my heater set to 81°F and harvest at or slightly before the 24 hour point.

What does your harvesting procedure look like? That is, at 36 hours or whatever time, what do you do? I'm guessing you turn off the airflow, let the whole hatchery sit for five to ten minutes, then drain out into some other container, through a seive. If things were working, at that point you'd have live baby brine shrimp in the seive which you could then rinse (or not) and then flush into some kind of cup.

Does that all accurately describe your procedure? If so, what are you seeing in the seive? Unhatched eggs? Before draining the Ziss, what do you see in it? Any separation? After about 10 minutes with the air off, but before draining, what you should see is a sort of orange haze or cloud at the bottom (the hatched BBS), a layer of brown at the water's surface (the empty egg cases/egg shells), and a middle section of water that's more or less clear.  What does yours look like?

[Justin V1]

Ok….

so I just looked now with a light and it does appear that we do have quite a few baby brine shrimp hatchlings!!! 
also many I hatched eggs too. Should I wait for more to hatch and will the babies get bigger?

I do have all the items you mentioned for harvesting 

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 6/18/2024 at 10:58 AM, Justin V1 said:

Ok….

so I just looked now with a light and it does appear that we do have quite a few baby brine shrimp hatchlings!!! 
also many I hatched eggs too. Should I wait for more to hatch and will the babies get bigger?

I do have all the items you mentioned for harvesting 

That's great! That's a start, and we can fine-tune as we go, but at least we now know that at least some of them will hatch.

I can try to find some citations if you want, but long story short, the sooner you feed hatched brine shrimp, the more of their yolk sack remains and the more nutritious they'll be, because they're living off of that yolk sack and using up the calories and nutrients in it. So from a nutrition standpoint, there's no reason to wait.

One thing you can do (I think this is @Guppysnail' s technique) is to shine a light at the bottom to concentrate the hatched BBS, drain out the Ziss into a suitably large container, through the seive, but only until the darker orange "cloud" was drained out. Those are your hatched BBS, ready to feed to your fish.

Then you pour the drained water back into the Ziss and put the air back on for another six or twelve hours and do it again. The idea is to harvest the hatched ones while giving the unhatched eggs some more time.

On 6/18/2024 at 10:46 AM, Rube_Goldfish said:

After about 10 minutes with the air off, but before draining, what you should see is a sort of orange haze or cloud at the bottom (the hatched BBS), a layer of brown at the water's surface (the empty egg cases/egg shells), and a middle section of water that's more or less clear.

By the way, this is what Iwas trying to describe here:

This is a screen shot of the newest ACO "how to hatch brine shrimp" video, at the 8:27 mark.

Slightly left of center there you can see Dean's Ziss hatchery, which had just spent about 10 minutes resting without any airflow. If you zoom in (or watch the video) you'll see dark orange at the bottom, a mostly clear middle, and a dark brown line at the top. That's what we're looking for.

[jwcarlson]

I had some struggles early on which turned out to be not waiting long enough.  Once I figured that out, I started having issues with non-hatching which ended up being a cleanliness problem.  I was rinsing the hatcher well, but I needed to scrub it with a nylon brush.  Once I started doing that I've had zero unsuccessful hatches and it's been well over a year.

[Justin V1]

Very cool!

Ok, here’s another question. Best way to store BBS until they’ve been consumed and what to feed them.

Also can you grow them to a larger size for larger fish?

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 6/18/2024 at 2:57 PM, Justin V1 said:

Very cool!

Ok, here’s another question. Best way to store BBS until they’ve been consumed and what to feed them.

Also can you grow them to a larger size for larger fish?

I don't store any of mine. They go straight from the hatchery to the seive, to the collection cup, and then pipetted into my tanks, where they stay until eaten. I've heard mixed reports of how long they can live in freshwater (assuming they're not eaten) but I've seen some swimming around 8 or 10 hours after being put in a tank. So I guess in a way I'm just "storing" them in my tanks until the fish eat them.

A lot of folks hatched more than they need and then freeze the rest, often using small silicone ice cube trays; I think you can find them on Amazon. I've never done it, though.

There are also people who put the collection cup in the refrigerator to slow their metabolism to feed later. Again, I've never tried that, but I kind of remember hearing that they'll live 12-24 hours in the fridge? You'd have to do some research on that.

If you're doing any of those three options (feed them all to the fish right away, freeze some or all for later, or refrigerate some or all for later), then you don't have to worry about feeding them. Newly hatched BBS don't even have mouths at first, anyway (they metamorphose at some point to grow them), and you'd want to feed them to your fish as early as is reasonable to maximize how much of that yolk sack the fish are getting.

If you want to grow them to adult size, you'll need a separate saltwater tank. I've never done this, either, but I've seen YouTube videos of people doing it in ten gallon tanks with sponge filters and spirulina powder. If you get it set up right and to a point of equilibrium, they'll bear live young and you could, in theory, skip hatching them altogether.

That said, I still don't think I'd bother. If you want crustaceans to gut-load and feed to freshwater fish, I think it would be easier to just use that tank to house daphnia or moina ('water fleas'), which are similar sized but live in freshwater. But you could do it if you wanted.