Brine shrimp!

[toxo]

I'm about to test Axelrods assertion that some brine shrimp eggs that he'd had for forty years hatched out. Still blows my mind actually. 

Anyway, my small pond in the garden was covered in eggs and me loving a project stuck a handful of weed in an empty tank indoors to see what (if anything) hatched out. I say if anything because I all the eggs I could see were cloudy and my experience tells me that unfertilised eggs go cloudy whilst the good ones remained clear. I'd almost given up looking and didn't even bother checking for a few days.Three days ago I was amazed to find about fifteen tiny babies swimming around.

Their yolk sacs were gone and there wasn't much in there to feed on. The best start you can give tiny fry is live food and remembering what Axelrod said I fished out a vial of brine shrimp eggs that's been in a drawer for at least forty years and set up a makeshift hatchery. Not holding out much hope because apart from shit coming alive after forty years,  how can that be? My via of eggs had a crack in it where someone has trodden on it. I've ordered some fresh ones but I'm hoping some of these old guys will come good and carry on blowing my mind.

A little encouragement will get updates.

[Arturomex]

Hey,

I'm interested in updates.

When I was a kid they used to sell brine shrimp by mail order calling them "Sea Monkeys." The comic books were filled with ads for them. It was my first brush with "not exactly as advertised." The ads had cute illustrations of "Sea Monkeys" frolicking around. Papa smoking a pipe, Mama smiling and the kiddies having a good time. The reality was, well, brine shrimp. LOL

I was breeding Siamese fighting fish for a while about 30 years ago. They would eat the brine shrimp but preferred mosquito larvae.

Please, let us know what happens.

Regards,

Arturo

[Sheilajeanne]

Please keep us posted! I used to teach at an outdoor ed. school, so this is right up my alley!

Loved giving inner city kids dip nets, and letting them poke around in the pond to see what they could find...one of them found a Eastern painted turtle that had had 3 of its 4 legs bitten off by a raccoon. I took it home, nursed it back to health, and kept it as a pet for many years. Called him Stumpy.

 

Edit: I remember those Sea Monkey ads!  

Edited June 28, 2020 by Sheilajeanne

[toxo]

I remember those Sea Monkeys also but I've never seen anyone attempt to explain how eggs laid forty years ago can burst into life when immersed in salt water???

Anyway, I was looking in the tank today and was amazed at how many fry there are in there. The size range is enormous, some are around 15/16mm and some are a tiny 4mm with others in between. I've been puzzling over what to feed them. I've tried a pinch of ground up biscuit. I bought some pond flake today and tried a pinch of that after grinding it up. I've got some lactol powder I might try. it's very fine and meant for new born puppy milk and it's full of protein. The problem is except for the bigger ones you can't make out if they're eating or not. Gonna have to rig up a foam filter. Don't want to poison the water. B/S eggs still merrily bubbling away.

[toxo]

Quick update. Can't see any movement in the hatchery but the stick on thermometer must be dodgy. I've just taken the temp @ 32.7C which might be too much for those little monkeys. The new batch won't be here for a few days but I'm just about to go to a shop where he's kindly gonna let me have some of his stock to help me out. The fry are growing. The bigger ones more quickly of course. Watch this space.

[Sheilajeanne]

Toxo, one thing I'm not clear on is what sort of fry you've hatched out. Are they fish, or amphibians?

Years ago, when I was raising tadpoles, and wasn't sure what to feed them, my nature encyclopedia (Comstock's) said to give them some tulip leaves, but first, I had to peel the membrane off the leaves so they could easily get to the pulp. That worked really well.

[toxo]

They're Goldfish Sheila. Some regular types with nice long flowing tails. I don't go in for odd types where the poor things have to shudder to get around. There are some that I like a lot. They're a nice bronze colour and darker on top so you don't see em in a pond but they look good in a tank. I did have some videos but can't find em. I'll try to get some pics.

The shop owner was a star today. he not only gave me some eggs for hatching , he gave me some live ones that he hatched yesterday. I did spend some money in there though including some hi-protein fry food that he feeds after two days old.

The bigger fry are looking like regular fish now, especially when their bellies are full of food but I can see even the tiny ones are feeding. Soon I'm gonna have to siphon off the fry so I can clean up the tank and put some filters in there. I might even make a fry trap to rescue some more out of the pond before the big ones eat em.

[toxo]

This is what came from a couple of dips in the (small) pond. About 25 I reckon and the tiny tiny ones in the tank are huge compared to some of these.

[Arturomex]

Are these going to go back into the pond when they're big enough to hold their own?

[toxo]

1 minute ago, Arturomex said:

Are these going to go back into the pond when they're big enough to hold their own?

They'll stay in a 2ft wide x 2ft high x 1ft 8inch tank until they shape and colour up. (Where the others are now.)Then I'll decide which ones to keep in the tank and which ones go back in the pond.