[Killietalk] hatching brine shrimp with marine salt

[Kate Breimayer <kate at munat_com>]

I was doing the boring chore of wetting the eggs with plain water, 
measuring plain salt, and adding the baking soda, and found that I could 
achieve the salinity most people recommended and a nice ph of 8 but 
didn't get the hatch levels I was looking for. Two things that improved 
my results were cleaning the equipment more often and switching to 
marine water. I set up a little nano reef recently and siphon off what I 
need for the bbs, this means the reef tank gets regular water changes 
and I am getting massive hatches of bbs now. On the plus side I have 
justified a foray into the nano reef hobby. On the minus side... marine 
tanks are a really expensive hobby, especially if your goal includes all 
domestic bred inhabitants.
I would recommend going to a reef store and buying some already made up 
R/O marine water and playing with it to see if you get results you are 
after, it theoretically should improve rates and times. You can also buy 
the salt and mix your own but it's expensive and a pain in the butt-cost 
is very similar to premixed r/o unless you get a big bulk container of 
salt... Don't know too if there are other compounds in the tap water 
that could be affecting hatch so maybe there are two experiments 
there-marine R/O vs marine tap water.
I also harvest after 24 hours and get huge hatches, then reharvest 
after another 12 and get a ho hum level, after 48 hours there is almost 
no bbs left at all. Can't complain-the quicker the hatch the less 
paraphenilia. I store the big can of "eggs"  in the fridge and keep a 
stash of room temp eggs handy in the fishroom but have found that the 
longer they are in the room the worse the hatch. Am guessing the 
humidity is getting past the lid on the bottle they are in. Used to 
store them in the freezer and that container totally went south, 
probably due to frost getting in it. Moisture is still considered bad 
for unhatched BBS cysts? It's been my experience. I try not to mess with 
the main stash very often out of fear of spilling something into it or 
leaving it open and condensation settling inside.
So where does one go to get a big BBS net? The little one is now outmoded...
Kate B
Olympia WA



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