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.

[Arturomex]

I'm enjoying reading about this. Please, keep posting.

Arturo

[toxo]

Update.

Can't say for certain whether the forty year old eggs were a success. When first hatched they are truly tiny and the fry were eating something, could have been softened eggs or baby brines. Anyway started a new batch yesterday using the freebie shop eggs. Started at 3pm yesterday and I've just checked them and they are starting to hatch (Innit exciting). Now I really have to get the fry out of the tank so I can clean it and get a filter in there. I'll start the second shrimp hatchery in a couple of hours to maintain an overlap.

All this is making me want to set up a bigger tank and get some of my beloved Discus again. The breeding process of the Discus has to be experienced. Later.

[toxo]

Update:

Tank is now sorted. Can't show pics yet because the two daylight tubes of the four in the lighting unit have blown and \i'm waiting for replacements. All blue at the moment.

The initial success with the shop given brine shrimp has been followed by a week of frustration with some ebay bought brine shrimp eggs although some of it has been my fault. I finally got a hatch last night but of course they're not really needed now. The disparity in size of some of the fish is interesting. Whether different species or subsequent spawnings I don't know.  They could just be runts I guess. I do know they go crazy for brine shrimp. It's a bit like a shark frenzy at feeding time and I saw one of the big ones chomp onto one of the tiny guys. Whether it let go because it realised it made a mistake or in response to my frantic tapping on the glass I don't know but it was too late for the little guy who spiralled off into the void :( 

 

[Arturomex]

I'm looking forward to some pics.

Regards,

Arturo

[toxo]

Phone camera can't handle it. Have to break out the DSLR. It hasn't seen the light of day in months. Have to re-learn how to use it 

[toxo]

Update:

I couldn't get the Nikon DSLR to do what I wanted. (It's been awhile and it gets tricky shooting through glass) so I broke out the never let's me down little Lumix compact. The pics aren't great I'm afraid but I've tried to show the difference in shape and size between some of them whilst trying to keep within 140kb. Sadly, a lot of the small ones  have gone to the fishtank in the sky because the bigger ones ate em. I have to say the big ones are my favourites. They're not like normal goldfish, they'll grow up to be a darkish golden brown and shaped like proper carp but without the barbules. I'll see if I can take a pic of one in the pond to show you.

This one is clearly deformed and I can't understand why he hasn't been gobbled up.

 

[Arturomex]

Excellent!

Did the original stock start as gold fish? I think I read once that they started out with more or less the same colour as you describe and were bred into all their golden splendor. I guess what I'm asking is if your stock are "reverting."

Regards,

Arturo

 

[toxo]

9 hours ago, Arturomex said:

Excellent!

Did the original stock start as gold fish? I think I read once that they started out with more or less the same colour as you describe and were bred into all their golden splendor. I guess what I'm asking is if your stock are "reverting."

Regards,

Arturo

 

All goldfish are members of the carp family but what we know as goldfish don't have barbules the way proper carp do. I'm thinking there might have been some cross breeding somewhere down the line because these fish don't just have the colour of "proper" carp they have the body shape as well. they're not torpedo shaped like regular goldfish. They're much deeper in the body. They're also growing much quicker than the other fish in the tank. Here's a pic of one of the smaller ones in the pond. there are some twice this size and the pond isn't very big.

[toxo]

Update:

A very short video clip. I couldn't get pics that do it justice. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS8kHxjHwWY&feature=youtu.be

[Arturomex]

That's great! Beautiful! Any chance of a longer clip? This one is only a teaser.

[toxo]

7 hours ago, Arturomex said:

That's great! Beautiful! Any chance of a longer clip? This one is only a teaser.

How can I say no to that!  I'll have a go but YT has changed so much since I used it last. My claim to fame back then was winning the 2009 Backyard Chickens DIY incubator thingy when I made one out of a wine cooler. "Won" a BYC sweatshirt which cost me £20 to ship over here . I made a YT vid of the eggs hatching and growing up.

[toxo]

Here you go. I apologise for the sound best turn it off.

 

[Arturomex]

That's great! Are all those fish from the eggs in your pond?

[toxo]

1 hour ago, Arturomex said:

That's great! Are all those fish from the eggs in your pond?

They are. There were more but a lot have been gobbled up. There are lots of babies still in the pond and I even saw some eggs in there yesterday. Still not sure which ones will be goldfish until they change colour. I'm positive the bigger ones are bronze fish and will stay that way which is ok, I like the shape of those. There are still some odd ones in the tank at least one of the medium sized ons have an extra hard ray in the tail. There were some with two tails but joined at the top, they didn't swim very well and either got eaten or were bitten by mistake in a feeding frenzy and croaked.

[Retswerb]

Any fresh news, @toxo? This thread is wholesome and needs an update.