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Re: KillieTalk Digest V3 #1941
Wright states:
> BTW, I never noticed that the chloramine (or chlorine) in my tap water hurt
> the bbs, at all. Rather, they helped by slowing bacterial growth. Some folks
> even add an ounce of Chlorox to the hatch mixture for that very purpose. The
> nauplii are quite sensitive to ammonia, but not to either chlorine or
> chloramine, AFAIK.
When hatching BBS, I never bothered to dechlorinate or give the source water
a 2nd thought--until recently.
A few months ago I was having problems getting good hatches and couldn't
understand why. The BBS would hatch, in most cases only partially, but they
would be near dead. I tried a longer/shorter soak, more/less salt,
lower/higher temps. Any variable I could think of was tweaked.
At the same time a fellow fish buddy who's on the same water system was
having similar issues. Neither of us was aware of the other's situation.
Then one night I asked him if he had ever had trouble hatching shrimps.
Funny thing, he'd been having a hard time hatching BBS for a few weeks.
After a little of deductive reasoning it dawned on us. "Our water has
copper...we've got dead shrimps. Duh inverts and copper!!!" Our water always
copper in it but not usually enough to make any difference. Lately it's a
lot more. The water company recently sent their yearly report, highest
recorded reading was 7.8ppm. Certainly enough to kill inverts (BBS). This
also explains why a starter culture of vinegar eels never took off.
So, if you have trouble hatching BBS with tap water check the copper levels.
For me, it's now bottled water.
Susan
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