January 3, 2009
You can easily hatch brine at home! |
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YOU WILL NEED: A small tube of brine shrimp eggs (purchase at a pet store or online, a flat plastic or glass pan, seawater or artificial sea salts, a magnifying lens, a thermomenter and a package of yeast.
WHAT TO DO: Brine shrimp eggs are sold dried, by the ounce. A single ounce contains thousands of eggs. Each egg is about the size of a pinhead. The eggs will hatch in a few days in any saltwater solution, natural or artificial. Fill the pan two inches deep with the seawater or water prepared with sea salts. Follow the directions for the amount of salt on the brine shrimp container. Sprinkle about 1/4 teaspoon of the eggs on top of the water. These will spread over the surface of the water. The eggs that sink are the one most likely to hatch. (if you have an air pump for an aquarium, use it to aerate the water and keep it moving. This will give you a better hatching percentage.) The eggs will hatch in a day or two and you will see them swimming in the water. Use a magnifying glass to observe how they look, move and behave.
Brine shrimp eggs are commercially collected from the Great Salt Lake in Utah and other very salty bodies of water. The eggs are dried, picked and sold all over the world. They are usually used to provide food for tropical fish.
The eggs seem to hatch best if the water is a little more salty than average seawater. You can try adding a tablespoon of sea salt to a gallon of water to make it more salty.
Temperature is also an important factor in how long it takes the eggs to hatch.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR: Vary the temperature in different trays to see which is best for hatching. The baby shrimp, called nauplii, are sensitive to light. Place a flashlight at one end of the hatching pan and observe how quickly the nauplii are attraced to the lighted side. Do you notice anything different about the way they swim in the light?
Trying to raise adult brine shrimp from nauplii is an interesting project. After the nauplii hatch, transfer them to a less salty solution, about that of seawater. Don’t crowd too many of them in their new home. It would be best if you could use an air pump to move the water in their new jar or other container. To feed them, mix a pinch of yeast with some warm water. Add a dropperful of the yeast mixture to the brine shrimp tank. Feed them each day. Another way to try feeding the brine shrimp is to leave their tank in a good light so that green algae will grow. If the water turns greenish, the brine shrimp will have plenty of food.
If you can keep the brine shrimp alive for three weeks, the females will lay eggs and produce young of their own. To study the effects of different temperatures, salinity (saltiness), light and other factors, remove a few shrimp at a time to a small jar. In this way you can do lots of studies without having to hatch a new batch of shrimp each time.
The Life of Brine Shrimp (text mostly taken from, SCIENCE AT WORK: PROJECTS IN OCEANOGRAPHY © 1972 by Seymour Simon)
Posted by: Seymour Simon
