Sub titled by Deadly Gopher!
Hi everybody, Joey here again and welcome back
So today I'm going to show you how to build a brine shrimp hatchery
Now this is a project that has been done countless times, and countless ways
But I get asked to give my take on it all the time
So, here it goes...
When it comes to feeding live foods, live brine shrimp are a very popular food choice
Highly nutritious, and a great first food for fry
However I tend to avoid it, typically speaking your fish can sometimes become dependent on it
and a hatchery of any kind may not be as sustainable as you might think
Simply put you might run out, and not be able to keep up with your production
Or you're culture simply might crash
Leaving you with nothing to feed your fish
Personally I Prefer to feed my home made food to fry
as it is something they readily eat, grow fast off of, and I never really run out
With that in mind, if I were to build a brine shrimp hatchery
I would not depend on just one culture
But several running all at different times
I wanna point out that I just use spare supplies that I already had
obviously, the most popular type of a "do it yourself" brine shrimp hatchery start with a water-bottle
For me though, I wanted to run at least five at a time
I needed a holder first, so I grabbed some spare plywood and cut it to size and build a little platform
Tall enough
For the bottles to sit in, and enough room to easily access the bottom of these bottles
I then marked off where I wanted each bottle and ensured that they were closer to the back side than the front
I'll explain why in a minute
I then drilled the holes out with a hole saw that were barely big enough for the bottles to fit into
I wanted them to be snug
I followed this up by painting the stand white
I went with white simply because it's what I had on hand
Painting it will help seal the wood and make it last longer
Now on to the bottles
I used five for this rack
Took the caps off and cut the bottoms of the bottle off
I put the cut-off portions aside as I would use them later
I then took the few "do it yourself" CO2 caps I had previously used on a build that I got on eBay for two for a dollar with free shipping
These were simply screwed on to the bottle ends, like we did in that "do it yourself" CO2 video
Other supplies I had on hand were a small air pump
We don't need a tonne of air for this though
So, almost any size air pump will actually work
some airline hose
Airline manifolds
I only needed one, but they come in various sizes and types
This will allow me to run multiple devices off one air pump and control the air to each, with tiny valves
Cost will vary but you don't need anything fancy
Then some micro-ball valves
These were made by two little fishies
This will allow you to cut off air or water on a 6mm airline
I also use some painters tape and a marker
Then some measuring devices
Again, nothing fancy is needed
A two-litre bottle of tap water ensuring it's de-chlorinated, some rock salt
Any type of salt is actually fine but I buy rock salt for about a dollar a pound (lb)
And it's 100% salt
Then a bit of baking soda