Live Brine Shrimp

[wpeterson]

I bought some live, adult brine shrimp from Jay's Aquatics yesterday. I have setup a 2-liter bottle brine shrimp tank, with bottom feeding airstone for an environment. I'm planning to feed them phytoplankton.

Any advice about keeping them longer term? How long do healthy adults live? I've heard only a week or so.

How much phytoplankton should I be feeding them?

What kind of water changes are required? I was planning a 10% water change (1 liter of water in their tiny tank) every day or two.

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[saltwaterB]

Normally we get 2-3 weeks max out of ours...keep them cool or cold if possible that will help extend their life. we feed phytoplankton every other day...and change 50% of the water every 3 days...but that is in a 33 gallon long tank...so I might change 50% of the water every day or other day in a small container like that...depending on the amount of Brine Shrimp...they are dirty little critters...plus most important thing to do is siphon off the deads...which may be a bit hard to do in an inverted soda bottle. As I find in the long flat tank, the dead ones tend to collect in one certain area...making it easy for removal...

 

[wdebenedettojr]

When I worked at a LFS we would get about 2 weeks out of the live brine.

 

[Greg Hiller]

If the conditions are good, and you don't have a very high density of shrimp, they can generate a self sustaining population (they give birth to live young if conditions are good). You might need to get a small sponge filter in the tank to keep the ammonia levels under control. All depends what you are trying to do.

 

[wpeterson]

Tanks for the advice and information guys.

We've had this group of brine shrimp for over a week now and they seem to be doing well. I've also fed about 50% of them to our fish.

I've been doing a 50% water change every 2-3 days and feeding about 2-3ml of phytoplankton every other day. The tank is usually about 1.5L of volume.

 

[wpeterson]

Update: I fed about 75% of the brine shrimp to our fish and I've been hoping to let the remaining 25% reproduce.

It's been about 18 days so far and they still seem healthy. I'm hoping they will be able to reproduce in our tank.