Decapsulating Brine Shrimp Eggs

by Paul Velasco

NOTE: This is a thread pulled from the CAAS web forum. Find the original topic on the CAAS Forum

Why?

It all happened when I tried raising some Ram fry. I was doing real good with them, must have had like 100 or so free swimmers. They were eating well with twice daily feedings of Baby Brine Shrimp(BBS). Well one day after feeding I noticed a big die off. WTF nearly 1/4 of them just started dieing off??? I realized I got lazy at this feeding and had not fully got rid of all the shells. Go figure the fry ate the shell and died!!!! This is why I started de-capping the eggs.

I have also found that the hatch rate is much better after de-capping. Now this is only empirical evidence. It is also much easier to harvest the BBS, just dump and rinse. The unhatched eggs are also eaten by the fry so nothing is wasted using this method.

How?

Materials:

• Bleach - no color, no scents, no additives. Get the cheapest you can find at walmart
• Brine Shrimp Net
• BS Cysts
• Dechlorinator

Procedure:

1. Get container that is at least 4" -5" deep. I use one of those throw away Glad plastic containers.
2. Mix bleach and water at a 50:50 ratio. Do not have to be precise just dilute down the bleach so it is not full strength. Place in container.
3. Throw in cysts. Watch carefully. They will go from orange - brown/black - to orange. When they turn back to orange the usable cysts will sink to the bottom. The empty shells will float to the top. There is no exact time as all cysts will take differing amounts of time. You just have to watch the color changes
4. (I do all this in the sink) Run cold water into the container at a very slow rate, so as not to disturb the cysts on the bottom. As the water overflows the container the egg casing will go with them. Do this until you are satisfied with the results (no more floating egg cases).
5. Drain the remaining cysts in a Brine Shrimp net and rinse under cold water. Make a solution of Declor and water and then pour over the cysts.

Now go and hatch the cysts! I will not go into detail on hatching BS as there is lots of information on the web about this. Do a web search.