confused about feeding brine shrimp

[Drake1]

I have tried to read about feeding live brine shrimp to my reef tank but the more i read about them the more i get confused since there are so many life cycles to them. should i feed live brine to my tank or not? I have read where it says they have no nutrional value to they can kill your fish. I was planning on using this continious brine shrimp hatchery in my sump but now i'm not sure if i should...what do you think?
thanks jeff

 

[sjfishguy]

Probably a waste of time really. They have little nutritional value and it would be like constantly feeding your fish skittles: they will love it but isn't a good thing long term.

 

[Aimiel]

The idea of raising your own brine shrimp is great, but there is the possibility of introducing disease, parasites or who-knows-what if you buy live brine shrimp. I use frozen, just because it is much less work. The fish seem to get just as excited about the treat of eating frozen as they do live, and I only add a very small amount every two or three days. They eat every single one, and rarely does one make it into my overflow. =)

 

[MegsB]

i feed live brine a few days a week (freshly hatched) as a treat, the fish love them, i have never heard/read it is bad, just that they have little-no nutritional value, so i suppliment the brine with selcon suppliment to make them more nutritional (though i feed frozen brine & mysis daily)

 

[sunfishh]

MegsB has the right idea. Newly hatched brine shrimp have a very high nutritional value for a short time. Unfortunately they uses this to grow bigger so they are not beneficial long. Selcon is awesome for gut loading your shrimp prior to feeding. The real expert on this is Paul B. He has been feeding brine shrimp to his reef for over 30 years.

 

[Questionmarc]

good to know

 

[Paul B]

Jeff brine shrimp do not have so many life cycles, they are a very simple organism. They hatch with a yoke sack and in a day it is supposed to be absorbed and the theory is that they are of little nutritional value after that. I disagree with that and hatch brine shrimp every day. Some small fish are impossable to keep without live baby brine.
After a day, you should start feeding the brine shrimp. You can use any cheap coral food or even bakers yeast.
I don't think it is a good idea to hatch them in your sump or even put them in your sump for two reasons. You really should not put their hatch water in your reef as it can become quite scurvy and I turn off my pumps for about an hour to feed them to my fish.
Otherwise most of them will just get lost or caught up in the filter.
If you are talking about live adult brine shrimp then I would say, yes it is a waste of money unless you are trying to get some difficult fish to eat. There are better foods than adult brine shrimp and they are expensive to feed every day.
For keeping dwarf seahorses, pipefish and many gobies you need live newborn shrimp.
There are no diseases associated with them.
Paul

 

[Mr.Limpet]

I live in the SF Bay Area and for decades the LFS could get live brine shrimp from the Bay. The local shrimp has gotten harder to find and I heard a rumor that the company would rather sell it as frozen.

Recently I went to a LFS and they had live Brine shrimp. They said that it was raised in Florida. The advantages were that they could keep the shrimp at room temperature (the live stuff had to be refrigerated) so that they lived longer and they were raised on Zoe, so they were much more nutritious that the wild shrimp. Anybody heard of the aquacultured shrimp?

 

[seapug]

most of what you buy in stores is aquacultured. As Paul B said, they are good for getting a new or finicky fish to eat but the adults that you buy are pretty worthless nutrition wise unless soaked in a supplement. Even then, there is still the risk of disease introduction.

 

[hybridgenius]

Better off with frozen brine shrimp containing essential vitamins presoaked.