Bioencapsulation and Brineshrimp

Biertrinker

Reefing newb
I usually feed artemia to my young fish as soon as the artemia has hatched, thinking that the shrimp provide the most nutrition before they have used up the macronutrients in their eggsack. Recently, I have started growing artemia for mature saltwaterfish every few days to add variety to their diet. I enrich w/ a DHA supplement (Super Selio).

My question for ya'll: If you are feeding mature fish and not worried about them being able to catch the artemia, is there any reason not to let the shrimp get full sized in hopes that they can hold more enrichment before feeding to your fish? Alternatively, is the sole purpose of feeding artemia to get the nutrients provided in the egg sac?
 
wish i knew the answer.

You need to send fishboy42 a PM. He raises fish and I'm almost positive he would be able to provide you the best answer to this question.

BTW he is a member of the knoxville club and a very great guy.

Brandon
 
Thanks for the suggestion Brandon. I PM'ed Fishboy42; this is his response.

"Artemia are fairly difficult to raise to adulthood in large numbers without special considerations, so I usually leave that to the pros and buy pre-enriched adult brine (frozen). It serves the same purpose, and adult fish don't mind if it isn't alive. It is a great food for feeding broodstock fish to condition for spawning.

For young fish, it is important to feed the brine to the fish before their nutrients (yolk sac) are gone. Another alternative is to enrich the brine, but for this you must wait 2 days, because they don't feed when they are first born (while they are using the nutrients in their yolk). After that, you can enrich them and they will consume the nutrients you feed. Enriching as soon as they are hatched does work to some extent, but it works because the nutrients "stick" to the brine nauplii rather than because they are ingested.

To answer your question about the yolk-sac, yes, it is important to make sure fish get some nutrients (yolk or enrichment), as it is more important than the nutrition of the brine shrimp itself. I usually just hatch and feed right-away rather than enriching, because it is easier and still accomplishes the goal. Very sensitive larval fish require specially-enriched brine, but I don't do that unless it is necessary for them."
 
Matt's pretty much right on. Unenriched adult brine are mostly protein and water. Newly hatched BBS are about the most nutritional and have high levels of HUFAs. Brine shrimp molt into their second stage (Instar 2) around 12 hours after hatching and commend feeding then, so you can feed them earlier than what Matt suggested. There are some nutritional profiles I've seen out there, but I'm not able to find them right now. Suffice it to say that newly hatched brine shrimp generally have the best nutrition, while unfed adults are really worthless for the most part.

If you're hatching out brine shrimp, decapsulating the cysts is the way to go, as the nauplii don't have th fight their way out of the shell and have a higher nutritional profile than regularly-hatched shrimp do.

Depending on what you're feeding though, frozen enriched adult shrimp are probably the simplest and cheapest way to go.
 
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