My DIY brine shrimp hatchery

I made a very rushed hatchery a few days ago, and it seems to be working OK, but I wonder if it should be better? I cut the bottom off a 2 litre bottle and tightened the lid. I have it inverted in a Pyrex jug for stability, and have run a bare air tube right down to the lid on the base. I then filled it 3/4 with tap water and prime (don't have distilled water on hand), about 2 teaspoons of table salt (don't have non-iodised, and people seem divided on whether the difference even matters), and a teaspoon or so of bicarb soda as was recommended for the pH. Within 24 hours I had a good hatch and the fry are still alive, so they're eating something! I read somewhere to keep using the same mix, and just top up the eggs every 24 hours. I can't find the website I read this on (may have been a YouTube vid, actually), and that's what I'm doing. It has a lamp directed on it constantly, to supposedly add a little warmth and the shrimp will respond to bright light more. To extract the shrimp, I turn the air off and let it settle for about 10 minutes, and then use a clean straw to syphon up a small amount from the bottom to drip into the fry tank. The eggs are apparently what floats to the top and the hatched sink slowly to the bottom. If I really focus, I can see the little dots are moving in the bottom, so I'm sure they're mostly or all hatched down there.

So, it's now been a few days and I'm adding 1/4 teaspoon eggs each morning and adding a little more salt and bicarb soda every other day. I may need to slow the amount of eggs I'm adding as there is getting quite the thick layer of floaties on the top when I stop the air to feed. Plus, when it's all blowing around, it's become a desert red colour in there, so I reckon there's a load in there that might just end up being wasted.

Is there anything I should do to improve the set up?

Also, if I have fed too much, will those shrimp just float around the fry tank and survive til eaten, or will they die quickly? My next problem is overcoming the cleaning, but that's another thread, lol. I'll add a picture to help explain what I've done.

...and here's a picture prepared earlier:

 

Your set up looks good. Depending on what you're feeding, the salt in the BBS water may not be doing your fry any good.

I've always read that you need to drain the BBS from the bottom. What I've seen is an airline tube poked through the bottom with a valve. I have always used a coffee filter to run fresh water over them before adding to my fry tanks.

NapulI offer the highest nutrition in the first 48 hours from hatching. Keeping them alive longer requires feeding them.

Once napulI are moved to the fry tank, they will survive around 5 hours if not eaten. Over feeding can pollute the tank with dead BBS. Another reason to keep up on tank maintenance.

Best of luck raising your fries!

 

I've found that the easiest thing is just to have 2 hatcheries running on alternating 2 day cycles. The first day is for hatching and the second day for feeding. The water will get nasty pretty quick if you try reusing it so just dump it out and start fresh. With 2 hatcheries you'll have a consistent supply of live baby brine shrimp. Also a couple of tips for your DIY hatcheries - you can use the base of a soda bottle instead of the pyrex bowl as a base for your hatchery and you can cut the top off of a soda bottle to use as a lid to keep salt spray from getting everywhere. I add a add a 10 or 12 inch piece of rigid tubing to the end of the air line and insert it down though the top - no clamp required to hold it in that way. If you have excess shrimp you can always freeze some to use later. Good luck with your fry!

 

Thanks for the tips, guys, these are going to help.

 

I have two DIY brine shrimp hatcheries running. When I first started using them I was always having trouble keeping the water temperature up. Then one day a simple no cost solution came to me. My Molly fry tank is kept at 80 degrees which is what I liked to keep the hatcheries at so I started floating my hatcheries in the fry tank.

It took some doing to come up with a way to attach them to the tank so they didn’t float around and turn over but a coat hanger and some air tubing fixed that. I just made a hook out of a coat hanger and covered it with air tubing so that it didn’t rust and attached it to the bottle.

Problem solved and it has also increased the hatch percentage to right at 100%. I now simply remove the hatchery from the fry tank and hang it on a bucket while I remove the brine shrimp then fill it back up and put it back into the fry tank. Sometimes my light upstairs does work like it should and I am able to solve my own problems without help.

 

That's a great idea. My current set up takes up more room than I'd like as well. So something in-tank would be good.
Draining them from the base wouldn't work this way, but I'll figure something out. Hmm.

 

I still drain mine from the base. I just put a shut off valve a few inches above a check valve. When I remove it from the tank I can detach the air tubing just below the shut off valve. I hang the hatchery off the side of a bucket and over my coffee filter which is on top of a glass pitcher. Oh I sit the bucket on a old piano bench that I keep in my fish room to sit on. Everything has more than one use....LOL

 

That's a great idea. My current set up takes up more room than I'd like as well. So something in-tank would be good.
Draining them from the base wouldn't work this way, but I'll figure something out. Hmm.

My in-tank hatchery is not DIY, but it is designed with a tub for the BBS to swim out on their own. It is supposed to hold the saltwater inside it and this tube is where it changes.

Anyway, here's a picture. It may give you some ideas!



Here's a shot of where the BBS swim out, and a hungry angel fry anxiously awaiting their treat.

 

That looks so efficient. I got some rethinking to do.
Bowcrazy, that's funny I use a kids ikea stool with my smaller tanks lol