Coral Food

[Bocephous]

I'm looking for the best way to raise baby brine shrimp for my corals. I have Gorgonia, Green Button Polyps, Shrooms and Montipora Digitata.

 

I've been feeding Kent Microvert. Most things are doing well but the gorgonia is getting thin in areas.

 

From the threads I've seen live baby brine shrimp would do good for them.

 

So my questions are....

 

What's the best way to hatch brine shrimp?

 

Who sells the best brine shrimp eggs?

 

Is it possible to grow your own phytoplankton to "enrich" the brine shrimp?

 

I want the best for my corals, I know if I can raise live food for them it'll be better than prepared dead/dying food I can buy.

[printerdown01]

The directions for hatching brine are probably on the back of the package . But essentially you need a water column and airline tubing... It is possible to grow your own phyto and enrich the brine (you could also raise rotifers -these will work too and are easy to raise). They do sell baby brine, frozen, and it does work quite well with gorgonians... Thus, you wouldn't have to set up 2 tanks in your garage just to raise food...

[Dave ESPI]

Originally posted by printerdown01

The directions for hatching brine are probably on the back of the package . But essentially you need a water column and airline tubing... It is possible to grow your own phyto and enrich the brine (you could also raise rotifers -these will work too and are easy to raise). They do sell baby brine, frozen, and it does work quite well with gorgonians... Thus, you wouldn't have to set up 2 tanks in your garage just to raise food...

 

HAHAHAHAHHAHA H ahah ahah Aha HAahaha I thought it was so goood Id swipe a quote ! see my sig silly monkey !

crap ! U need anything else? het some brine shrimp or seamonkeys then ! lol

no really look up Sanfrancisco bay brand or.... sallys Brine shrimp they can ship live to ya.

[Bocephous]

I did do search first but there's 50,000 brine shrimp posts and 20,000 plankton posts (exagerated for emphisis) so I asked much more specific questions

 

I was looking for tricks to raising them, special teqniques and stuff for "enriching" them.

 

Thanks for reccomending brand names dave, but you're still one of those people we used to beat with fire corals after diving. (only actually did it once, just threatened after that )

[Dave ESPI]

Since U humored me.... PLESE get a copy of Joyce Wilkersons "Clownfishes" book there is a huge section. ( I dont know why... But her book is SO Usefull ! ttyl

[Jefe12234]

I have grown several different live foods so I can help you some there. For the phyto, I got my stuff from Florida Aqua Farms. You just need a starter culture of Nannochloropsis and a small bottle of Micro-Algae Grow fertilizer. I grow mine in 2 liter bottles. For the culture water, I mix up a batch of saltwater at a SG of 1.020 and add 1 mL of fertilizer per liter of water. I aerate the cultures heavily and light them with a LOA 65w PC light. After about a week, they should be dark green. I refrigerate 3/4 of each bottle, and use the last quarter to start a new batch.

 

I only made a couple batches of rotifers because I ran out of room for bottles. I used the same process of harvesting 3/4 and using 1/4 to restart the culture, except the culture water for these guys was the phyto I grew in the other bottles. I aerate them very lightly. They're ready to harvest when the culture loses its green color. Although I dumped mine into full strength phyto when restarting my cultures, it's actually better to keep the culture a light green by adding small amounts of phyto more often. Highly concentrated phyto has a high pH that can shock the rotifers. My cultures took longer than they should have and always had lots of detritus. This may be why.

 

As for brine shrimp, they're easy to hatch. Give them some 1.015-1.020 saltwater, a little light, and aerate them in a cone shaped container (like an upside down 2 liter bottle). In 24-36 hours you have baby brine shrimp. They can be enriched, but I've never done this. The freshly hatched shrimp have a yolksack that makes them nutritious until they consume it. So if you feed them right away, they should be fairly nutritious anyways. I got mine from Brine Shrimp Direct.

 

Here's a website with pictures and more information on culturing live foods. http://www.sjwilson.net/reef/

 

Wow, I write a lot when I'm bored at work. Hope some of it helped.

 

-Chris