how easy is it for a beginner to maintain a brine shrimp hatchery?
 

some concerns:

1. does it need to be maintained once the hatchery is set up, or can i hatch some shrimps and put the whole thing in storage for a few weeks?
2. how much does it smell?
3. is setting up a brine shrimp hatchery a good venture? it'll be food for some silver dollars and oscars.

thanks! :-D

I've always thought that baby brine shrimp were good food for newly hatched fry of discus, and some others, which are not coming to mind. I'd think brine shrimp would be too small for fish like Oscars & Silver Dollars to sustain them but it would make an excellent treat. I could be way off base here as I don't know this to be fact...:|

ever have sea monkeys?

and i too believe it wont sustain oscars or silverdollars

well if u breed A LOT of them maybe... lol

Will they even see something that small as food though?

Oh and to answer the question, yes they are stupid easy to set up. Set one up, hatch some, then put it in storage for a while no big deal.

It won't be long before those guys get big and are craving feeder fish. So I wouldn't bother setting up anything semi-permanent to feed them from while small. A block of frozen brine shrimp is fairly cheap and all of my fish love them. You might want to consider bloodworms too, once they get a little large for the brine shrimp. I wouldn't feed that every day, I'd mix it in with dry cichlid pellets. By the time they get big enough that store-bought frozen food gets expensive, you'll probably want to move on to bigger and better food anyway.

Now if you're thinking about a tank of livebearers for feeders, that I think I could get behind.


(As an aside, my Bosemani Rainbows absolutely love defrosted brine shrimp, and go crazy when I feed them that. They are seriously unimpressed by flakes. My tetras/raspboras also thoroughly enjoy it, but don't seem to be quite the connoisseurs that my rainbows are.)

I would say get camel shrimp instead. They are very hardy, and breed quickly and easily. They also don't need much room. Do some research on them and see what you think :)

Those are 100% SW and are kind of hard to come by.

If your Oscar is small enough, then I would breed my own Guppies and/or Convicts. Convicts breed like crazy, and can have hundreds of fry in a month of two. But I doubt you could put it in storage. The only downfall of BBS is that they are so small.

Yes, they are saltwater, but you can find them at petsmart usually

Petsmart doesn't carry any SW inverts/fish, and I have yet to see any inverts except bad looking Turbos and CC stars at Petco.