Brine Shrimp

R

Ross110

I saw some How-To articles on raising and feeding brine shrimp, but I was curious if they could be added to the refugium and allowed to naturally reproduce to a degree and possibly filter up to DT where they would be feed on kind of like pods do.
Are there any articles on this or how-to that illustrate a safe way to do this? I dose phyto every few days so I would assume they have something to feed off.
 
Brine is only nutritious if gut loaded which would require you to pretty much pollute you tank if you raise them in the fuge. The freshly hatched baby brine shrimp are more nutritious since they still have the yoke sac. I would suggest using the 2 liter bottle method to hatch these out. I can give you a scoop or two of the decapsulated egg's if you want to try, they are really easy to hatch.

Cheers,
 
The reason you don't put them directly in your tank to hatch is because the casings are a pollutant. Even the water that they hatch in is poured out through a very fine brineshrimp net, and some even choose to rinse them with more water before releasing them into the reef.
 
understood.
I have seen small shrimp looking creatures in the dark crevices of my DT some times at night (only seen 3 or 4) randomly swimming around in the cave.
any idea what kind of shrimp they are?
As far as i can tell they are not pods, they actually swim and have noticeable eyes, but are only 1mm or smaller...
sorry no camera.
 
Pods are a natural breeder, and your livestock tend to be their predator. If you have some running around in the overflows or the sump, their babies will end up in the main tank. If you don't have a sump or overflows, you can create 'pod piles' which is usually bits of live rock piled up inside a strawberry basket (from the supermarket). The fish can't get in to eat them and they have a breeding area to do their thing.

In your tank, you may see a massive amount of one type of pod and then later you can't find but a few. This is the boom or bust cycle we all encounter. After a while, they return en mass. What causes this could be a change in the food, another predator getting to the majority, or there are so many that they run out of food and simply collapse because of starvation. It isn't something to necessarily sweat, but it is nice to know what is going on and when.
 
Wow, thank you for that Marc, very helpful and gets the light bulbs flickering upstairs about ways to make the fuge a little better.
I was doing some reading and looking online yesterday and saw a lot of people talking about GARF Grunge. To my understanding it is just a sample of LR/ LS from a VERY large and old GARF tank that has lots of little goodies in it....
Anyone ever tried this?
 
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