Brine shrimp hatchery

I recently bought some brine shrimp eggs, from a unnamed shop. I tried a few different techniques to hatch them, and after many attempts, had no luck

So i have decided to give it another go, using the same batch, and a new batch of ocean nutrition brine shrimp eggs.
I will hatch them with the exact same process, side by side.

First step, was to make a decent hatchery....

"LA cola" had the most suitable 1.25L bottles, as the necks were nice and steep, and had no patterns to catch the eggs.


Step two..... Water holding test with 1L of RO water(very clean fresh water) from my 5 stage filter.

So far so good. Holds water and bubbles well

Step three..... Now its time to add 1 table spoon of table salt, as per instructions.


Step four..... Add 1 teaspoon of brine shrimp eggs to the mix



One hour later, and its looking good

I have 20w lamps on them to maintain 28*c

I slightly slowed down the bubble rate so it's not as noisy and i can get to sleep.


Step five..... Monitor, and wait 24 hours.

Hey cool set up for hatching them....simple and effective....

How many baby shrimp you after -that's heaps...?

Never heard of the RO water and table salt but I guess it would work....I always just take it from my tank

I hatch mine in the same way ensuring the bubbles are enough to keep the eggs turning - except I only put a tiny amount of eggs in...only enough to cover a quarter of a little finger nail....and that hatches heaps...apparently the nutritional value is in the freshly hatched brine shrimp so once hatched, about 20-30 hrs depending on temperature - 24° seems good - then I tip them into my tank for all the corals etc to feed on.....works well and is easy....

What are you feeding?

The instructions recommend 1 teaspoon for 1L and saltier then natural salt water, because they are from salt lakes. Also to keep the temp at 28*c. if that doesnt work, ill try your way. It sounds alot easier

Im going to feed coral with them, and im sure the fish wont mine either.

Where did you get your eggs from, and how much were they?

Yer fair enough - I'm sure the people selling it know best....

I have just done it my way because being a bloke -I don't read instructions....

We use to hatch them as Sea Monkeys as a kid -I always wanted to keep them with my sea horses and pipe fish but they kept getting eaten...so I use to buy heaps of them (99¢ packet) and was always hatching them....was a lot of fun

Good luck - keep us posted with the success.... .

will do

4 hours down.....

Sometimes an entire batch of brine shrimp eggs simply will not hatch as it wasn't prepared properly (drying process). When I was very much into breeding show quality Betta Splendens, and at any one time had over one hundred 10 Liters jar for show quality individuals, two 2 footer tanks for growing fries, two 4 footer for sorting/selecting/culling youngsters, and four 1 footer cube breeding tanks, I was hatching and feeding BBS every day and if I bought a bad batch of eggs, non would hatch and the whole can would be useless. If you fail to get a decent hatch rate (75%) after 2-3 attempts, I suggest getting a new batch of brine shrimp eggs.

the 19 hour mark....
The right batch(bad batch) is slightly whiter in color, and there are small bubbles collecting on the bottle walls.

28 hours and they have finally hatched.
The ones from the suspected bad batch, are actualy bad. Did not hatch
On the left you can see the empty eggs on the surface. I emptied out the bad batch and separated the live brine shrimp into both bottles to give them more room to move.

The bad batch smelt bad as well, at the time of the good batch hatching.

I have now moved the hatched shrimp into a 1 foot aquarium, and added a bit more salty water, so they have some room to move and grow.


I have started feeding them live yeast, and the seem to love it It looks like there growing already
To feed then, i put a small amount of the active yeast in which makes the water slightly murky. when it clears up i add a little bit more. they probably get fed about 4 times a day.

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Your welcome to borrow my hatchery and use my eggs if u want? i have HEAPS

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Cool set up charles,my Dad used to raise them for my brothers marine tanks in the late 70s and supply a small aquarium shop at Maroochydore, they retired to Caloundra back then.

He would treat and use herbivore pooh and let it sit until the cyano was in abundance on it and treat the eggs surface then the eggs were added and once hatched they fed on it.

He used to get monsters and had a very good turn over.

He kept the tanks at around 32c to 34c and double the oceans salinity levels at least and two air stone run tubes to create the current in each tank, it all worked well, I used to use brewers yeast as well later on, not as good as the natural herbivores number two’s were, but still okay.

Its interesting the food supply needed for them, boxer shrimp and peps in the wild feed on the same foods more or less,cyano and the independent bacteria that can exist in normal ocean salinity.

Excellent thread mate,well done.

Thats quite interesting!
Thanks for sharing that : lol : I didnt have a lot of luck with the brewers yeast. It made the water pretty gross and they were slowley dying off. so i ended up just feeding them all to my tank.