properly harvest and feed BBS to my angelfish fry

I would like advice on how best to harvest and feed BBS to by angelfish fry. Quick background: I started out using the san Francisco bay hatchery. If you haven't heard if it, it is just a black box that you fill with water and fill with shrimp eggs and salt. When they hatch, they swim up into a clear bottle that is filled with freshwater. They are attracted to the light and they swim into the bottle. And then because it is freshwater in the bottle, you are supposed to be able to pour the shrimp directly into the tank for your fry. Which I have done many times with no problems. This hatchery is useless if you have a large number of fry. It does not produce nearly as much BBS as you need for a large spawn. I only have 25 angelfish fry, so it is not a huge number. So the number of BBS has been sufficient for my fry. The only problem is that I need two hatcheries going in order to have a constant supply for my angelfish fry.

I decided to go ahead and make a DIY hatchery using a liter bottle and an air pump. That is how I realized how small my hatch rate was in the box. Clearly the bubbles make a huge difference!

Anyway, the DIY hatchery produced WAY too many BBS. I also wasn't sure how to properly harvest them and feed them to my fry. Do they need to be cleaned first? I didn't have to worry about that before because they were in a freshwater bottle when it was feeding time! With this one I used the straw method, put one finger over the end up the straw, put it down to the bottom of the bottle and lifted my finger. I squirted it onto a paper towel to strain the water out. At that point I wasn't sure what to do next. I ended up just touching the paper towel to the top of the water in the fry tank and the 10 gallon was taken over by shrimp. It was INSANE how many shrimp came off of that small little splot on the paper towel. I am thinking next time I may just use my pinky nail and scoop up and teeny tiny little chunk.

OK THAT GOT WORDY SORRY! So basically I am just looking for advice on how folks on here harvest the BBS for their freshwater fry. There are many ways of doing it so I am looking for what works best for me! How do YOU do it?!

Are there ways to save the shrimp so they last an extra couple days? At this point, a hatch of BBS is only lasting one day...maybe a day and a half. With the DIY hatchery I have way more than I need, but they don't last as long as I need.

Do the BBS have to be rinsed since they were in saltwater? If so, does tap water work? or do they need to be rinsed with dechlorinated water? And what is the best method for doing this?

I am pretty new to hatching live BBS and I am open to all suggestions to make this as smooth as possible. What tricks have you learned? How can I improve? THANKS!!

 

Check the pet stores . While brousing through petco I saw some brine shrimp nets used just for that. Very fine netting. Alison

 

You an just siphon the brine straight into the tank..


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Check the pet stores . While brousing through petco I saw some brine shrimp nets used just for that. Very fine netting. Alison

I actually did pick one of those up yesterday. I haven't had a chance to use it yet. I am sure it will be much smoother than using a paper towel. But I am still not sure what the best way to clean them, feed them to my fish or make them last longer

I am very pumped about this. As you know I have been trying to breed angels for a while. It really just boils down to the live BBS. That is what has allowed me to be successful finally! I am hoping to be able to start feeding them other things soon though. It is so stressful having to worry about always having a supply of BBS ready to go.

At this point I have tried the HikarI first bites a few times with this batch. They put it in their mouth and spit it right back out. The ONLY thing they will eat is live BBS. They have been free swimming for 11 days. I hope they will eventually be willing to eat the powdered stuff. Part time anyway! I just hate having to have 2 hatcheries running at all times just to feed 25 angelfish fry!

I am hoping to get some ideas from people that I haven't thought of. How can I improve this process?

You an just siphon the brine straight into the tank..


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So they don't have to be rinsed first or anything? What about the saltwater that will inevitably end up in the fry tank if I syphon them straight in there? Will that hurt my freshwater angelfish fry?

 

My bad. Siphon them through a very fine net so that the saltwater goes down the drain but the brine doesn't..then out the brine in a bucket of freshwater and then siphon into tank..hope this hwlps


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I would think you could just gently rinse the net with the shrimp in it then right into the tank. I would use ro water just in case as I don't know what effect the chlorine would have on how long they stay alive in the fry tank? I know I used to hatch them in a gallon jar with an airstone to feed the guppy fry that I was raising for the fish store. And I also know I didn't do a fresh batch every day. Unfortunatley it was too many years ago to remember. I am wondering if maybe the dead ones and eggs that didn't hatch just sunk to the bottom and left the live ones to catch? That was 45 plus years ago . Alison

 

are multiple hatcheries the only way to go? because without having two going, I am not able to have a constant supply.

For those who raise a lot of fry.....what are your tricks?

 

Google how to keep fresh brine shrimp for feeding fish fry. It brings up lots of sites including how to refrigerate to hold baby or adult brine shrimp . Direct shrimp express ? had some good ideas. Alison

 

Brine Shrimp Direct, they sell brine shrimp eggs, hatching supplies, and some dry foods. They have very helpful pages for beginners, I think.

You want to overfeed the baby fish, so that they all get a chance to eat. They will not eat more than they can hold, but they can hold a lot more than you think. A couple of hours later, you go in with a bit of airline tubing (so that you can work around the fry) and siphon out most of the excess into a white container. If you happen to siphon out a fry or two, they can be picked back up by sucking them into the airline and returning them to the tank. The water you siphon is then replaced with fresh, thereby giving the fry tank a small daily water change.

 

Is this dangerous?

I won't bore you with WHY I had to do it this way, but do you think this was a mistake:

Last night when I harvested the shrimp from my DIY hatchery I had issues. So what I ultimately ended up doing (just for this one batch) was fill a bowl with water from the fry tank and then squirt the straw that is full of BBS into that bowl and a small amount of their salt water obviously got in there too. But the majority of this bowl of water was freshwater/tank water.

Then I used a turkey baster to suck up groups of BBS from that bowl of water and squirted them into the fry tank. By this point there was probably hardly any saltwater in the small amount of water in the turkey baster with the BBS (considering most of the bowl was tank water and only about a tablespoon of that bowls water actually makes it in the fry tank). Is that dangerous???

I actually found this process to be easiest for me and would really like to do it that way every time. This morning all of my fry looked great and I used the same method to feed them before I ran out the door to work. Everyone munched away at the BBS and look healthy as can be. So am I taking a risk allowing a teeny tiny amount of salt to get into my fry tank? Like Hardly any at all? And just for extra measure...since salt water is heavier than freshwater, I even waited a bit for everything to settle in the bowl and only sucked babies from the surface of the bowl.

What do you think of this method? can I do it this way every time?

 

When you put salt water into freshwater, it dilutes so that the amount of salt is uniform throughout the container. Waiting just gives it time to do so completely, so you can use all the shrimp; it doesn't matter. I don't think you will be getting that much salt into the fry tank, but it works better if you sift the shrimp naupliI through a shrimp net and put that into the fresh water. If you still don't have a shrimp net, I'd suggest a coffee filter. I used to use those for vinegar worms. It doesn't tear as easily as a paper towel.

 

When you put salt water into freshwater, it dilutes so that the amount of salt is uniform throughout the container. Waiting just gives it time to do so completely, so you can use all the shrimp; it doesn't matter. I don't think you will be getting that much salt into the fry tank, but it works better if you sift the shrimp naupliI through a shrimp net and put that into the fresh water. If you still don't have a shrimp net, I'd suggest a coffee filter. I used to use those for vinegar worms. It doesn't tear as easily as a paper towel.

Ya, I don't think much salt got in there at all. But You are right, it is probably best to sift them in the net first. I do have a shrimp net, but when I tried it out, it didn't work for me. I had a LOT of dead BBS for some reason. They weren't eggs because they eggs floated to the top of the hatchery. They were just dead BBS thank sank to the bottom of the hatchery with the live ones. So they came up in the straw with the rest of them! They had only hatched a couple hours prior, so they were fresh....So I am confused why so many were dead.

I was worried that I did something wrong when harvesting!! I thought the net or the rinsing process killed them or something!! All I did was dip the net into a bowl of tank water to rinse the babies before putting them into the tank. 75% of what ended up in the tank was NOT live BBS and the fry would not eat them. But when I put them directly in the bowl without sifting through the net first, I found many dead ones in the bowl as well. They all sank to the bottom so it was easy to syphon out the live ones at the surface. SO maybe it wasn't the net or the rinsing that caused it!

Here's what I am thinking went wrong. My first DIY hatchery was a 2 liter bottle filled half way. So one liter of water. I had no issues with dead BBS. The one I used this time was a 16.9 ounce bottle, filled halfway....so just 1/4 of a liter. Right now I only have the packets that came with the san Francisco bay hatchery (those packets have eggs and salt mixed together for you) I split a bag in half in order to compensate for my small DIY hatchery, but even that may have been too much AND the half I put in there may have had too much salt? That is my theory anyway....

So long story short, I have a vial of eggs coming in the mail tomorrow with a box of aquarium salt. I plan to use my 16.9 oz hatchery again, but this time I will be able to measure the salt and eggs exactly how it should be and maybe I won't have the problem again!!

Its annoying because when researching it online, some people say you MUST rinse BBS VERY WELL before feeding. Others say a small trace of salt won't hurt anything.

 

Yeah, I think the heavy concentration of salt in the hatchery was your issue.

Don't worry that much about the salt. Remember that many people use aquarium salt as a treatment or even regularly in their tanks with no real ill affect. If you're doing water changes on your fry tanks as often as you should then it should be impossible for salt to get too high.

Finally, here's how I harvest my brine shrimp: I have a plastic mcdonalds water cup with a rubber band on it. I rubber band a coffe filter so that it hangs into the cup a bit, and then I use a turkey baster to suck up however much bbs I want out of my hatchery and then squirt it into the coffee filter. Water drains into the cup, then I put some freshwater into the coffee filter, then I remove the filter and dunk it into the tank.

 

Yeah, I think the heavy concentration of salt in the hatchery was your issue.

Don't worry that much about the salt. Remember that many people use aquarium salt as a treatment or even regularly in their tanks with no real ill affect. If you're doing water changes on your fry tanks as often as you should then it should be impossible for salt to get too high.

Finally, here's how I harvest my brine shrimp: I have a plastic mcdonalds water cup with a rubber band on it. I rubber band a coffe filter so that it hangs into the cup a bit, and then I use a turkey baster to suck up however much bbs I want out of my hatchery and then squirt it into the coffee filter. Water drains into the cup, then I put some freshwater into the coffee filter, then I remove the filter and dunk it into the tank.

Thanks! I am really hoping that was the problem (too much salt in the hatchery) because it was VERY discouraging!!

The angel fry tank gets 30-40% water change every day, I am feeling good about it. I think they will be ok despite the small bit of salt they may have gotten in the tank.

If the dead BBS were a result of too much salt in their hatchery, then I am feeling better about straining and rinsing the BBS before feeding. I was just worried that I killed them somehow in that process!! But I know now that wasn't the case. (since I had dead ones when I didn't rinse them first)

So quick question then, do you use tap water when rinsing the babies? or do you use tank water? Or dechlorinated water?

 

I just use tap water. The fresh water will kill the bbs before the chlorine does (and the babies will kill them before the fresh water does!).

 

I just use tap water. The fresh water will kill the bbs before the chlorine does (and the babies will kill them before the fresh water does!).

Cool, thanks!

I am actually quite surprised how long those BBS last in the fry tank! I will see them alive in there many hours after feeding time. The funny part are the BBS who get stuck to the sponge filter. Those BBS try and jump off the sponge filter but get sucked back to it again. My angel fry like to hang out by the sponge filter and try and catch the BBS leaping off of it. LOL They tend to have trouble catching them because the jump off and back on again is very quick. But it is fun to watch them try! (for the record, I keep the filter off during feeding time. But this is hours later)

 

Some of my piglets after lunch

 

They're so tiny!!!

 

They're so tiny!!!

Their bellies get so plump and orange when they get done eating! I worry they are going to explode sometimes! lol

 

That's the cutest yet creepiest thing I've ever seen XD