Will Decapsulated brine hatch in the SH tank?

[sloshes]

Bing is just throwing some decapsualted artemia sh.......stuff against the wall and seeing if it sticks, which is good on this forum. The responses are less than friendly in nature. I still love you, Bing. As far as the detritus, I'm sure I get that from many sources. I have very good flow and do LOTS of water changes. Would you be concerned about the same thing with non-dwarf species?
I only come here seeking knowledge.

slosh

p.s. Dan, your input would be appreciated.

 

[JennyL]

Sloshes,
You are mistaking honest and direct answers and advice from experienced keepers as unfriendliness.

We care very much about these little creatures and are trying to help prevent problems for them.

 

[sloshes]

Well okay then. What's your take on my question above?

 

[Wink]

It would be less of a problem in a larger tank with larger occupants - and if you're only adding it for your corals I'm sure it's not anywhere near the ratio of food to water that you need for dwarves.
My own personal choice would be to hatch them first anyway (which I do) - but if we're talking about a small amount of decapped in a large tank I wouldn't tell someone that it's a bad choice. It seems reasonable to me.

 

[sloshesv]

Thanks

 

[Paul B]

As to if the eggs will hatch in the dark, yes they will, I hatch them in the dark everyday. About the airation, only a small portion will hatch with no turbulence. The "Lake" they come from is no where as still as an aquarium.
I myself do not use decapsulated shrimp so I have no knowledge about them. I do however hatch them and dump the pint of water and shrimp into my reef with no rinsing. The hatching container must be cleaned after about ten hatches because of the bacterial slime that formes there. After it forms, the shrimp no longer hatch. I hatch them in NSW or just tank water.
I made this hatchery many years ago and use it every day.
The eggs are put on the right (black) side with an airstone. In 48 hours the barrier is removed seperating the clear side from the black side. The sides are divided with black plexiglass and the barrier just covers a hole between the two sides. The black cover is put on the black side and a light is positioned on the clear side. In about 30 minutes all the shrimp swim through the hole to the light side and the shells stay on the right. I put back the barrier to cover the hole and the tube on the left is lowered into another container to go into the reef.
Works like a charm.

 

[sloshesv]

Good stuff.

 

[Big Ying]

Thanks Paul! That is very creative! I bet if you made more and tried to sell them you would get a lot of takers. I like that better than the normal brine shrimp hatcheries I see. Anyway, that is just the kind of feedback I was looking for. More food for thought. I'm definitely going to experiment with a few things before I get the dwarf SH's. I wonder how much the hatch rate would improve in the dark with no turbulence for decap brine, instead of brine in the egg shells? Maybe not a lot, but who knows? I wish I could find that article or post again where someone talked about using black film containers with a hole poked in it so the shrimps would swim out to the light. I remember that was with brine shrimp eggs because it said the empty shells would float to the top and couldn't get out. There would definitely be no turbulence in there so the hatch rate would probably be pretty low. Would that improve with Decap brine is an interesting question. Anybody else out there with more unorthodox ideas?
Please chime in!

 

[Wink]

Very nice, Paul. You'd need two to feed dwarves every day and with a small volume dwarf tank I'd still recommend rinsing instead of adding the hatch water but that's quite a DIY! Would certainly eliminate the shell issue.

 

[Big Ying]

I actually found a hatcher that uses the principles I'm talking about, except there is no aeration and in the dark. www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.detail/iid/6062/cid/1695

I read a forum post on Petfish.net from people who have actually used the product. They said it worked. They thought the hatch rate was lower than using aeration obviously, which is why some preferred the more traditional aeration and light method. They were all using eggs, not decap brine. Anyway I can see how the film cannister would definitely work. The major question is the hatch rate. It would certainly be lower, but how much lower? And would the hatch rate improve significantly with decap brine? Remember, my original intent was to have a fairly reliable vacation feeder for dwarfs. Let's say you are gone for 3 or 4 days. You put a bunch of fresh BBS in the tank the morning you leave using a traditional hatchery. You put a film cannister in the night before you leave with BBS eggs or decap brine. You also put in a 2nd film cannister the morning you leave. That way you'll have a continuous hatch over the next 2, maybe 3 days of fresh BBS at a continuous rate. If using eggs, shells wouldn't get out of the cannister because he hole is in the side, not the top. Same thing for some of the waste generated. If you are gone longer, it would be easier for a novice watching your tank to just put a premeasured amount of eggs or decap in a film cannister (maybe using two cannisters - clean and refill one every 24 hours) and place into the tank according to your directions. I think even my mom could handle that.
Ofcourse, if the hatch rate of decap brine is half way decent using that method, it could even be used in place of having a separate hatchery. You would spend more money by going through more eggs, but if you could afford it, so what.

 

[Paul B]

Big Ying, I also have a two gallon hatchery but I don't need that many shrimp. That was for when I was raising seahorses. Now I only use them for a few gobies and a pair of blue stripe pipe fish. I get more than I need.
As for selling them, I already have a patented brine shrimp feeder that feeds shrimp to seahorses. I sold over 6000 of them but I retired from manufacturing them this year.

http://www.breedersregistry.org/Articles/v4_i3_paul_b/paul_b.htm
Paul

 

[Big Ying]

Very nice Paul. That proves you can keep certain kinds of seahorses in a reef tank under the conditions you spell out in the article. You said you don't make those feeders anymore. Is there anywhere you can order them from? Did you sell your patent or something?

 

[Paul B]

Ying, i am the only one that builds them, Brine Shrimp Direct used to sell them for me in their catalog but I retired from that because it was not real profitable. The patent cost $6,000.00 which I recovered but I could work on my job for an hour and make more than 2 or 3 hours of building feeders. I did really sell them all over the place including Iran (I can't really see anyone with seahorses there though) England, sweeden, Russia, Turkey etc.
I made all the tools to build them but maybe someday I will do it again or let someone else do it. I still have customers.
Paul

 

[Big Ying]

I did an experiment with a portion of brine shrimp eggs. I put them in a black film cannister with a hole poked in it and put it in a glass of tank water. 24 hours later I put a light on it. To make a long story short, it looked like many, many hundreds emerged into the glass within 36 hours. After 72 hours they were still swimming around in there, with no aeration. I put some phytomax in there this morning (Is that appropriate to feed/enrich brine shrimp with?) and they were still swimming around this evening when I poured them through a brine shrimp net and fed one of my reef tanks. A few eggs spilled out of the cannister when I initially put them in, but almost all the eggs stayed in the cannister. I'm going to try this with Decap brine shrimp eggs when I get them for comparison, before I buy some Dwarf SH's, and just generally experiment with hatching them. I have no idea what the hatch rate was, as I'm not experienced in hatching them, but clearly they can hatch in significant numbers with no light and no circulation. Is there any threads or information on how many eggs are in one of those little tiny spoons that came with a hatch kit I had?

 

[sloshesv]

That's fine work , BY.