Live Brine Shrimp
- Thread starter Sparty00
- Start date
Artemia, brine shrimp, are a great food if fed as Naupii, babies under 20 hours old. Kept much longer they lose nutritive value and must be fed a heathy diet of phytoplankton before feeding them to you fish. Otherwise the fish will have a poor diet and lose weight.
There are a ton of articles on the web about raising and feeding brine shrimp so do a search for a method that suits you.
There are a ton of articles on the web about raising and feeding brine shrimp so do a search for a method that suits you.
AquaReeferMan
Got Reef?
I feed my fish live brine. Ive been doing it for almost 2 years now. I keep them in a 1/2 gallon tank with an air pump. I dose the tank phyto 3 times a week. When I am ready to feed the display tank I scope a bunch out with a fine mesh net and move them into a little tupperware container. I then soak them in garlic extreme and Selcon. None of my fish are skinny. This is not the only thing I feed them though nor do I recommend them as their only food source.
I agree Aquaman. If you feed the adult brine phyto they regain their nutritional value. Most reports of poor results with brine shrimp come from people feeding fish week old shrimp that have never been fed or fed only yeast. Here is a detailed account of raising, and enriching Brine Shrimp by Frank Marini.
With normal feeding artemia are a decent source of protein, the source being the "meat" part of the shrimp itself. Gut loading the shrimp means that it has this nutrient PLUS what ever you use to gut load it, the extra coming from the actual contents of the digestive tract containing what ever you gut load it.
You can gut load with more protein, with lipids, or with medications, whatever suits your application best.
Much of the controversy around nutrition is as WaterKeeper mentioned, but also, because people read the protein content of frozen brine shrimp which unfortunately for the most part is a percentage based on total package content, including packing fluids and shrimp water content.
"MOST" other foods list protein content based on dry weight percentages and thus make comparison misleading.
Now, if you take that flake food like spirulina that I and some others feed, and wet it in the tank, and THEN calculate percentages based on wet weight, and take thawed, rinsed frozen brine and calculate wet weight percentages, you will find the brine shrimp protein to be higher than the spirulina.
While protein levels are decent with artemia, mysis shrimp are slightly better, based on similar dry or wet weight percent. However, culturing mysis in any numbers similar to numbers in an artemia culture are next to economically impossible.
The mysis are cannibalistic, take months to grow, and don't multiply anywhere near the rate that artemia do.
For nutrient levels comparisons of GSL brine shrimp see the section 4.4.1 of the article written by the Artemia Reference Center at the University of Ghent and posted on the United Nations Fisheries and Oceans website.
Nutritional properties of ongrown Artemia
You can gut load with more protein, with lipids, or with medications, whatever suits your application best.
Much of the controversy around nutrition is as WaterKeeper mentioned, but also, because people read the protein content of frozen brine shrimp which unfortunately for the most part is a percentage based on total package content, including packing fluids and shrimp water content.
"MOST" other foods list protein content based on dry weight percentages and thus make comparison misleading.
Now, if you take that flake food like spirulina that I and some others feed, and wet it in the tank, and THEN calculate percentages based on wet weight, and take thawed, rinsed frozen brine and calculate wet weight percentages, you will find the brine shrimp protein to be higher than the spirulina.
While protein levels are decent with artemia, mysis shrimp are slightly better, based on similar dry or wet weight percent. However, culturing mysis in any numbers similar to numbers in an artemia culture are next to economically impossible.
The mysis are cannibalistic, take months to grow, and don't multiply anywhere near the rate that artemia do.
For nutrient levels comparisons of GSL brine shrimp see the section 4.4.1 of the article written by the Artemia Reference Center at the University of Ghent and posted on the United Nations Fisheries and Oceans website.
Nutritional properties of ongrown Artemia
There is a Sea Monkey Reference Center? 
Yup! And this monkey has it down as his favorite site, after anything with RHF's articles/input that is.<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10246870#post10246870 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by WaterKeeper
There is a Sea Monkey Reference Center?
LABORATORY OF AQUACULTURE AND ARTEMIA REFERENCE CENTER
I don't feed LBS in my show tank .. I think its kinda of a PIA.
However I always use LBS during the first week or so in QT .. great method for stimulating appetite as well as introducing a wild caught fish to other food your going to feed in the ST. If your fish won't eat LBS then you definitely have a problem.
I gut load my LBS with selcon .. helps nutrition wise but also helps the fish make the transition to other foods that I will feed in the show tank which are soaked in selcon.
However I always use LBS during the first week or so in QT .. great method for stimulating appetite as well as introducing a wild caught fish to other food your going to feed in the ST. If your fish won't eat LBS then you definitely have a problem.
I gut load my LBS with selcon .. helps nutrition wise but also helps the fish make the transition to other foods that I will feed in the show tank which are soaked in selcon.
With that type of title RayJay, I almost feel bad about feeding them to my fish.
