Feeding mandarins brine shrimp questions

[Wolf89]

Ok, so I've decided to get a green mandarin fish. First of all, I have a very healthy pod population as well as a 10 gallon tank with nothing but thousands of pods, meaning I can seed the DT with pods often. But I know, they benefit from a varied diet, and I've decided I'm going to try culturing live baby brine shrimp. I may try to train the mandarin to frozen brine shrimp eventually I've found a great way to do it, but I have a few questions. Is how much brine shrimp do I need? I'm going to be raising 5 sperate half liter cultures as to ensure no crashes and I can measure out how many I need. For half a liter, it is recommended that you use 1 gram of eggs. According to the seller, there is approximately 225,000 baby brine shrimp per gram of eggs. Do I need to add that much to the DT with the mandarin a day? Is that too much or too little? I would do about 1/3 of the bottle each time, three times per day if that is the correct amount of brine shrimp. There are 2 clownfish in there, so I don't know if that makes a difference with competition. My other question is how do I add the brine shrimp into the tank? After a little research on the topic, I found out that it is just some in and turn off powerheads and filters and give it about 15-20. Does that sound right? Thanks for your help, Tyler

 

[Brad Miller]

Just my two cents....
My mandarins would eat millions of baby brine shrimp and pods
I finally decide to add some white fish and scallop to my regular cubes of homemade feed.
My mandarins took a while, but now love the chunks that end up at the bottom and are really fat and happy now with no extra work.
I do give them treats of brine shrimp every now and then too.

 

[miPapareef]

I used this on an inverted bottle, any carbonated drink bottle works. One port is the airline for the bubbles, the other port is a drain line with a valve. After the brine shrimp hatch, I turn off the bubbles and move the light to the bottom of th bottle. All the shrimp settle or move to the bottom and I drain them out.

Here’s a couple pics of my set up.

I only hatch in 500ml (half sized) lots and use about 1/4 recommended brine eggs and still way too many hatch for 1 days feeding.
Edit: I never had a mandarin, so when I say too many, it’s to feed 3 anthias in a 15 gallon QT tank.

 

[Wolf89]

@miPapareef yes that is basically how I'm going to do it. Do you just pour them in, use a pipette, or what?

 

[miPapareef]

@miPapareef yes that is basically how I'm going to do it. Do you just pour them in, use a pipette, or what?

I just drain them in a small plastic cup and then pour that into the fish tank. The water I use to hatch is my normal tank salt diluted to 1.018

 

[Wolf89]

The water I use to hatch is my normal tank salt diluted to 1.018

Is it necessary to dilute?

 

[miPapareef]

Is it necessary to dilute?

Not required but recommended for best hatch rates. I just follow the directions from here