Brine Shrimp

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    Brine shrimp are the back bone to many areas of ornamental fish culture, freshwater or marine as well as food fish production. The cysts or eggs are harvested in huge volumes because of their importance in the aquarium hobby, here is a short summary explaining a little about them.

     

    Brine shrimp can be hatched in a wide variety of salt concentration, 1.025-30 being the  usual specific gravity,  the cysts can also be decapsulated just leaving the embryo to hatch and doing away with the shells. For quantity and batch hatching, good aeration, heat and light  will result in naupli hatching in about 24 hours, the naupli are photo positive and will congregate by a light source making harvesting easy.


     
    Brine shrimp are found in inland salt lakes such as the great salt lake Utah, San francisco, Caspian sea and many other locations such as man made salt pans. They do not live in the open oceans, they have the ability to live in salt concentrations as high as 50% , these extreme conditions result in no fish predation but being photosynthesising algal feeders it limits food sources.
     
    Their gills help them to deal with these extreme conditions by absorbing and excreting ions, producing a  concentrated urine from the maxillary glands.Brine shrimp can also with stand a wide range in temperatures, from 37 deg C down to room temperature.
     
    The average size of an adult brine shrimp is between 8-10 mm, they can grow larger depending on how ideal conditions are and as to how plentiful food supplies are, divided into about twenty segments approximately 10 sets of flat, leaf-like appendages called phyllopodia that beat in a regular rhythm. The adults can be pale white, pink, green, or transparent and usually live for a few months. They have compound eyes set on stalks and reduced mouthparts.
     
    Brine shrimp can reproduce sexually,the male clasping the female with his second large antennae fertilising the females' eggs as diploid (containing both male and female chromosomes) the eggs are then laid in a brood sac in the water where the naupli will hatch.
     
    Brine shrimp can also reproduce by way of Parthenogenesis, this involves no fertilisation, in effect a clone of the female, this has occurred in some snakes, lizards, komodo dragons, sharks, it is also common with other micro crustaceans such as daphnia, rotifers etc.
     
    The cysts are produced when there is a shortage of food or very high salt concentration, these cysts are harvested in huge  volume, used in aquaculture , ornamental and food fish production, also marketed in the toy industry under sea monkeys.