Anyone ever add spirulina powder to fresh BBS

[afboundguy]

In my insomniatic state that woke me up at 430 this morning I got to thinking about adding spirulina powder to the BBS I hatch in the brine shrimp direct hatchery plate and I was wondering if anyone else does this with their live BBS?

I know with the frozen spirulina BS offered they just soak it but was curious about if its possible with freshly hatched BBS?

I was thinking I could add the spirulina powder to the hatchery dish but would worry about it spoiling the water too quickly as that's happened when I've added it to my pod cultures which is why I use it sparingly now so I don't have to do as many water changes on the pod cultures.

The other option that seems much more viable would be to add it to the small specimen container I put the BBS in and either let it sit for a few extra minutes or just add it to the spot feeder tubing so the tank gets a little extra and the BBS can mow down on it as they're making their way down the tubing towards the spot feeder where the light attracts them to.

Please feel free to offer your thoughts or opinions!

 

[Garf]

I’ve used it in the past to gut load, works ok.

 

[afboundguy]

I’ve used it in the past to gut load, works ok.

How do you gut load them? In the culture or before you put them in the tank?

 

[andrewkw]

You can't gut load newly hatched baby brine. They won't eat since they have their yolk which is also what makes them nutritious.

 

[Garf]

You just give them a bunch a couple of hours before you feed them to the tank. However, as @andrewkw sais, they don’t eat it for a day or two, and it’s better to feed them ASAP after hatching. Bigger fish love bigger brineshrimp and you can grow them to adulthood with spirulina, although I’m sure these things are cannibalistic.

 

[ichthyogeek]

BBS are not cannibalistic. Some fairy shrimp species (similar body plan, but freshwater and vernal pools) are cannibalistic, but the Artemia we hatch are not cannibals. They don't have the mouth parts to do so.

For gut loading, you can dump a small amount of spirulina powder into the hatching container, although I strongly recommend taking out the brine shrimp first, and then rinsing them to get rid of a lot of the wastes produced in the hatching process though to keep the water from fouling too much. I believe it takes around 6-8 hours to fully gut load them, but would have to look back on some papers to figure that out.

I'm currently growing out some brine shrimp right now. I feed around 1/4 tsp spirulina per day (rehydrated over night in a small amount of water, strained through an old brine shrimp net) to around 5 gallons of culture in a 10 gallon tank, and supplement it with greenwater from a saltwater molly tank.

 

[Garf]

BBS are not cannibalistic. Some fairy shrimp species (similar body plan, but freshwater and vernal pools) are cannibalistic, but the Artemia we hatch are not cannibals. They don't have the mouth parts to do so.

For gut loading, you can dump a small amount of spirulina powder into the hatching container, although I strongly recommend taking out the brine shrimp first, and then rinsing them to get rid of a lot of the wastes produced in the hatching process though to keep the water from fouling too much. I believe it takes around 6-8 hours to fully gut load them, but would have to look back on some papers to figure that out.

I'm currently growing out some brine shrimp right now. I feed around 1/4 tsp spirulina per day (rehydrated over night in a small amount of water, strained through an old brine shrimp net) to around 5 gallons of culture in a 10 gallon tank, and supplement it with greenwater from a saltwater molly tank.

They are non selective filter feeders. They will eat decaying organic detritus of any type as long as it is of suitable size. This is why when growing out, you can start with a culture of 1000 bbs and end up with 50 adults and no bodies of bbs.

 

[ichthyogeek]

They are non selective filter feeders. They will eat decaying organic detritus of any type as long as it is of suitable size. This is why when growing out, you can start with a culture of 1000 bbs and end up with 50 adults and no bodies of bbs.

Emphasis on filter feeders. They can consume bacteria, phytoplankton, and detritus, but aren't going to actively hunt and eat others of their own kind. If a large portion of the population dies off, then the rotting bodies will be scavenged on (hence no bodies of BBS).

 

[SteveG_inDC]

This thread is great! Thanks to OP for raising it and for @ichthyogeek and @Garf for weighing in. What are some resources for learning more about baby brine?

I'm interested in making them more nutritious and making them last longer so I can use the same batch over a longer period. I have a bottle of spirulina powder and a circular hatchery kit, which works well, but seems to best accommodate removal in very small amounts. I also have an empty 20g tank in addition to my QT and DT, which could be repurposed to a brine shrimp storage and growout but I don't know how to proceed or whether it would be worth the effort.

 

[shred5]

You can't gut load newly hatched baby brine. They won't eat since they have their yolk which is also what makes them nutritious.

Exactly but older ones yes. I used to gut load/enrich them all the time when I used to breed fish.
I would use a hufa powder instead or some phyto. Also some Selcon is good.

 

[ichthyogeek]

The growout for the shrimp is kind of long (2-3 weeks but I haven't exactly measured how long it takes). But they do awesome on homegrown phytoplankton, and barring that, spirulina powder. So it's not exactly work intensive but it's time intensive in that it simply takes a long time to grow them out.

If you're feeding small fish like dwarf seahorses, you're most likely better off just hatching them straight away and feeding them out that way. Most reef fish will enjoy artemia in the various life stages from my experience though.

I recommend culturing them in a tank or at least a container with a large surface area. I don't get nearly as dense cultures when working with a 5 gallon bucket when compared to a 10 gallon tank filled up with 5 gallons of water. You're going to want mild aeration; enough so that there are calm-ish zones . If you're using live phytoplankton, then just toss in any leftovers from the bottle as you get it. Otherwise, I recommend 1/4 tsp spirulina powder left to rehydrate overnight in a small container and sieved through the brine shrimp collection net to reduce spirulina clumps (which are really just waste for the artemia) every day. Change water once a week making sure to siphon out detritus. You're going to get a lot of brine shrimp sucked out during water changes. What I do is take an old brine shrimp net and do an airline siphon instead since larger diameter water change tubing is too much volume for the net to handle. To start the tank off, I'd just add a normal hatching's (1/4-1/2 tsp eggs) worth of brine shrimp (do your best to get rid of the cysts) into the tank.

 

[ichthyogeek]

Resource wise, just googling how to raise brine shrimp is a good idea. So is getting your hands on a Plankton Culture Manual (Hoff & Snell). I documented a growout back in 2014 (titled "Live Food: Artemia", you can look it up on google) of what worked for me. Interestingly enough, I'm getting far better results in winter than in summer (tried this pastsummer and the cultures kept crashing). I do think that while phyto blends like Reef Nutrition Phyto Feast can work in the short term, it's far easier to use homegrown phytoplankton instead.

 

[Doctorgori]

heck you can even use yeast but IMO baby foods like sweet potatoes or carrots work a lil better nutritionally ... spirulna powder can make your water funky if over fed ..you want a light tint

as stated, easiest to me also is homegrown phyto ...I add a starter of nano or whatever to a 10 gal, some Guiliards and let it marinate for a few days... I add about 1/4 tsp of hatched bbs .... it will run like that for a while before you gotta reset it

 

[shred5]

I also used Reeds algae paste or instant algae.
Nonviable and last a long time in the refrigerator and could be frozen.

 

[lapin]

Great thread

 

[Reef Nutrition]

Thanks for the mention, @shred5

We have customers, mainly public aquariums and fish aquaculture operations, that use our phytoplankton blends for growing and enriching brine shrimp, routinely. The reason they do this is because they don't want to grow multiple species of algae. Feeding multiple species of algae ensures that your Artemia have a good nutritional profile. Many people that scale up algae to accommodate the demands of large live feeds operations have a higher risk of contamination and failure. When algae cultures crash or become contaminated and you have no back-up, animals die. We help to alleviate this with our concentrates. The fact that our algae, depending on the blend, can be frozen for years is very useful to those in aquaculture that don't want to culture algae, can't culture enough, or can't culture the species required to result in a nutritionally valuable live feed organism. Our most popular commercial blend for growing and enriching brine shrimp is Shellfish Diet 1800, for those of you that are interested: https://reedmariculture.com/product_shellfish_diet_1800.php. We have a hobbyist version called SDaquarist: https://reefnutrition.com/products/sdaquarist

-Chad

 

[afboundguy]

Great thread

I try lol! I originally started the thread about doing this for freshly hatched BBS but this has almost made me want to start growing some of them into adults and gut loading them so I agree that this thread is turning into a good one...

 

[KC's CNC Creations]

i've always found it quiet easy to keep a sustainable culture of brine shrimp.

they aren't as susceptible to crashing like some other cultures and keeping them in a more heavy concentration of phytoplankton doesn't hinder their reproduction like it does pods. live phytoplankton is the way to go for long term results with minimal effort and the fish love it.

 

[Phuture]

The growout for the shrimp is kind of long (2-3 weeks but I haven't exactly measured how long it takes). But they do awesome on homegrown phytoplankton, and barring that, spirulina powder. So it's not exactly work intensive but it's time intensive in that it simply takes a long time to grow them out.

If you're feeding small fish like dwarf seahorses, you're most likely better off just hatching them straight away and feeding them out that way. Most reef fish will enjoy artemia in the various life stages from my experience though.

I recommend culturing them in a tank or at least a container with a large surface area. I don't get nearly as dense cultures when working with a 5 gallon bucket when compared to a 10 gallon tank filled up with 5 gallons of water. You're going to want mild aeration; enough so that there are calm-ish zones . If you're using live phytoplankton, then just toss in any leftovers from the bottle as you get it. Otherwise, I recommend 1/4 tsp spirulina powder left to rehydrate overnight in a small container and sieved through the brine shrimp collection net to reduce spirulina clumps (which are really just waste for the artemia) every day. Change water once a week making sure to siphon out detritus. You're going to get a lot of brine shrimp sucked out during water changes. What I do is take an old brine shrimp net and do an airline siphon instead since larger diameter water change tubing is too much volume for the net to handle. To start the tank off, I'd just add a normal hatching's (1/4-1/2 tsp eggs) worth of brine shrimp (do your best to get rid of the cysts) into the tank.

I had to do a big water change cause i put to much but is it okay if the powder settles on the bottom?

 

[polyppal]

In my insomniatic state that woke me up at 430 this morning I got to thinking about adding spirulina powder to the BBS I hatch in the brine shrimp direct hatchery plate and I was wondering if anyone else does this with their live BBS?

I know with the frozen spirulina BS offered they just soak it but was curious about if its possible with freshly hatched BBS?

I was thinking I could add the spirulina powder to the hatchery dish but would worry about it spoiling the water too quickly as that's happened when I've added it to my pod cultures which is why I use it sparingly now so I don't have to do as many water changes on the pod cultures.

The other option that seems much more viable would be to add it to the small specimen container I put the BBS in and either let it sit for a few extra minutes or just add it to the spot feeder tubing so the tank gets a little extra and the BBS can mow down on it as they're making their way down the tubing towards the spot feeder where the light attracts them to.

Please feel free to offer your thoughts or opinions!

I tried it before like the BRS video suggested, seemed like it deteriorated the water quality of the shrimp pretty bad so I gave it up. I mix the powder in with my homemade frozen food to get the nutrients into the fish