[Killietalk] RE: Brine Shrimp Cyst Storage

["Koran, David HQ02" <David_Koran at hq02.usace.army.mil>]

There is something else we might be missing here, the presence of oxygen.
Heat and humidity are the most blamed villains but up until recently when I
would open cans of cysts from Sanders I would always have an oxygen scrubber
pack in the can and usually there would be a good hatch.  Most cysts you get
today don't have these scrubber packs any more.

Sanders also used to sell "short shelf life" lots usually at a great price
($7-10) which I would always get great (90%+) hatches mainly because I only
had them opened for less than a month.  When I spoke with Bruce Sanders about
a year ago I mentioned seeing some black 2 pound cans of Sanders eggs at the
Florida Fish Farmers Co-op and he said they would probably not be of any
decent quality because they were processed years before but mainly that they
were most probably not properly stored and had been expose to quite a bit of
heat.  As for storage hints, I remember driving by a Sanders residence in
Ogden, Utah over twenty years ago and observing stacks of cases of brine
shrimp cysts in the garage as the garage door was wide open, it was July and
about 90oF.

When I have questions about brine shrimp and brine shrimp cysts I usually ask
reliable sources like Bruce Sanders and Dr. Bob Rofen, who have been in the
business over 25 years, or Guy Perschon of the Utah Division of Natural
Resources who manages the yearly brine shrimp cyst harvest.  They tend to
have more knowledge then resellers like Jemco.

Dave Koran


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