Continous brine shrimp culture... possible?

[Evolutionnext]

Hi,

I am thinking of a concept of continously feeding my tank with live brine shrimp with close to zero user intervention necessary. Here is my idea, but please comment on where I might be wrong:

The idea would be to have a large tank of maybe 2000l (the main tank is 40 000L) that continously gets dripping seawater from the main tank. The residual brine shrimp tank water then goes down the drain. The tank has 24h light and aeration. In addition, there is continous fertilization so I can get a culture of phytoplancton going. The brine shrimp are added to the tank as adults. Then I add an automatic system where a light attracts the adults and an automatic net catches the big ones (the small ones fall through) and moves them to the fish tank.

Thereby the phytoplancton feeds the brine shrimp, the dripping water does continous water changes so no maintainance necessary, the main tank water is not made worse by feeding as you feed live animals that either live or get eaten so they dont rot...

Would this work? Any ideas what might be a problem?

 

[SantaMonica]

Certainly can be done. Is very aquaculture-ish. There is multi-level shrimp growout device you can buy somewhere, but is fairly small. The huge main catalog from Pentair Aquatic Eco Systems just came out, and has a lot of this type of stuff.

It's all in the automation, and how much you trust it. If you are always around, you could just do it in large batches so that you can look at each batch before letting it into your main tank. This is cheap, and safe.

 

[paulW]

Here's an example of a small commercial separator
http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/c1/c213/hatchery-dish-p183.html

They actually work pretty well, the shrimp are attracted to the light, and they swim to the hole (which has light) and end up in the cup to harvest.

However, I am not sure you are going to be able to implement something like that.
If you have enough light to grow phytoplantkon to support the shrimp, they aren't going to be attracted to your net by light (the commerical one I linked is totally dark inside, except for the cup)

And the other problem I see is this.. Let's say you do grow enough phytoplantkon to keep the colony alive and reproducing. In just about every closed culturing system, eventually you get a popluation explosion which eats more food than is available and then there's a shortage of food, so you get a population crash (or problems from overpopulation).. I know you will be harvesting, but if you have ever cultured daphnia, you know it is impossible to do without adding food. So the point is.. You are probalby going to have to have a seperate culture of brine shrimp food that you will have to add.

I'm not trying to be a downer, I just am skeptical that you will be able to get this to work. I've never read of anyone that has been able to keep a population of BS growing as you propose. That doesn't mean it's impossible, I just think it's difficult. But maybe in a 2000 liter container, the problems go away? In any event, keep us updated. I would love to learn from your experience. I want to be supportive, I just want to warn you that this will be difficult.

 

[Evolutionnext]

Thx for the great reply.

Yes.. the light attraction issue must be solved by turning off the main lights for some time. I guess the phytoplancton should be fine with some periods of darkness every now and then.

Population explosion is a good argument.. yes.. but if I get the harvesting right, I should harvest 95% of adults as soon as they reach the right size and this might be enough to keep populatons under control? At any rate.. an interesting aspect to look out for.

NEvertheles.. having a phyto plancton culture drip into the tank is also an option and wont be too difficult to acomplish I guess.

Ill keep you updated... thx for your thoughts.

 

[convict360]

you have a 40000 litre tank!? :O

 

[joe jaskot]

Not much nutritional value in adult brine shrimp. More nutrition in baby brine shrimp. Just buy brine shrimp eggs and hatch them.

 

[tlindsey]

I really don't know what you are feeding the adult Brine Shrimp too but like joe jaskot said minimal nutrition.
I raised Seahorses on Mysis shrimp which has more protein. Imo Adult Brine Shrimp would be fed to my fish as a treat.

 

[paulW]

The reason why they say adult brine shrimp have little nutritional value is because when you hatch them at home (or buy them live at a pet store), they have been starving for quite some time.. so they lose a lot of nutrients.
Frozen adult brine shrimp are fine as food.
I just looked it up 4.7% protein. 0.9% fat.
As a comparison, frozen bloodworms are 6% protein, 0.5% fat..
Now of course, frozen mysis are better, but the point is.
If this guy found a way to feed his brine shrimp well enough that they would reproduce, I think the adults would be fine nutritionally. Like I am not an expert by any means, but I wanted to say why people normally say live adult BS are bad..

 

[joe jaskot]

Most decent fish foods contain 30% or more protein. 5% protein is not very nutritious.

The reason why they say adult brine shrimp have little nutritional value is because when you hatch them at home (or buy them live at a pet store), they have been starving for quite some time.. so they lose a lot of nutrients.
Frozen adult brine shrimp are fine as food.
I just looked it up 4.7% protein. 0.9% fat.
As a comparison, frozen bloodworms are 6% protein, 0.5% fat..
Now of course, frozen mysis are better, but the point is.
If this guy found a way to feed his brine shrimp well enough that they would reproduce, I think the adults would be fine nutritionally. Like I am not an expert by any means, but I wanted to say why people normally say live adult BS are bad..

 

[paulW]

Most decent fish foods contain 30% or more protein. 5% protein is not very nutritious.

That's somewhat misleading. Frozen foods are mostly water, which hurts the nutrient precentage. Dry prepared foods are not.
Frozen mysis is kind of the gold standard for frozen foods, and it's about 10% protein.