I went to Aquatic ecosystems here close to Orlando to get some microworm culture, and found a rather new product called Hatch-n-feeder. For everybody who hatches their own brine shrimp for their goldie, betta and tropical babies, this is a perfect invention. Instead of all those other brine shrimp hatcheries, you can leave that one in the tank. It looks kind of funny, with 2 different compartments, one for the brine shrimp eggs and salt to be, and that leads to a different compartment, where the hatched brine shrimp will swim to, following the tank light.
At the end of the second compartment is a piece with little holes in it, and the most light coming in, so thats where the shrimp are gonna swim to, and out into the tank, where the hungry guys of bettas and goldfish fries are already waiting!! It comes with a little measuring spoon for salt and eggs, as well as a small pipe cleaner, and all of that for around $10 at aquaticeco.com
Hopefully my eggs start to hatch tomorrow, I wonder if they really swim out in the tank by themselves.....

that sounds like a neat product, wonder if they are at any other stores, hmmmm....

Here is the link to another online store selling that thing, with a picture.....http://store.yahoo.com/animalworldnetwork/noname5.html

Hi Ranchugirl... did it work well? I am tired of siphoning and filtering the brine shrimp so that product seems very attractive. Just wondering... how does that unit prevent the salt from getting into the tank?

The product discription says the walt water has a different density than fresh water, and it will stay in the hatching compartment,the one where the air line is connected to. And even if a bit of salt water gets out, bettas like that anyhow....
The only negative thing about the hatcher is that the airline tubing comes off easily, so I had to glue it in place with aquarium sealer. You should have seen my little betta babies sitting in front of those exit holes as soon as they figured out that food comes swimming out of there! It was hilarious!

Sounds great! THanks Ranchugirl... I will try to get hold of one of those

Thank you ranchugirl, I've been hoping
someone would come up with a better system,
I will happily give the hatchery a try.

wow thats a hella cool idea i realy like that, do you have to keep on adding the brine shrip eggs or do they reproduce them sleves? good info thanks.... think i might get one....

Cheers DPG

You have to keep adding eggs every few days or so, but thats the only *work* thats required. Siphoning out the eggs shells before adding the new eggs is easy with a piece of airline tubing as well....

You know, I saw something like that at our store and was considering it for my goldfish. Theyre not fry, but most of them are young and still growing and I thought it would be great protein. No stores around here sell live brine shrimp. Do you think bigger goldfish (about 3-4" long) are too big to notice the shrimp?

I am not so sure. Those freshly hatched shrimp are nothing but a white dot in the water, and hard to see. You could feed the shrimp the liquid fry food, and once they are bigger, feed them. Although some stores sell live adult brine shrimp. Yours does too?

haha i must get me one of theses things B)

oops oh yah how am i suppose to know how much eggs / salt to put into this thing ?

We carry those at my work.. Don't see too many people buying them..

[offtopic] by the way, ranchugirl... we're getting in goldfish on wednesday from some place in homestead, florida [/offtopic]

Sapphyra, if you are getting them from KoiAndGoldUSA (Oski is the owner), then you are in for a treat! I always found something at his place....


WoWz, the hatcher comes with instructions, as well as two sizes of spoons, one for the salt, the other for the eggs, as well as a small brush and some sort of a mini eye dropper for sucking the egg shells out of there. Its all complete!

Ranchugirl:

How did your hatch 'n' feeder work? Please give us an update!

Laura

It still works like a charm, Starsmom! Although, now that the betta fry has gotten bigger, meaner and faster, the brine shrimp have even less of a chance to make out of that hatcher more than a few inches. I feed them more crumbled up betta food now, as well as chopped bloodworms, so I have cut down on the amount of eggs I put in there. And since the betta tank is heated, there is no slow down in hatching, which you might have if you hatch them the conventional way, in a separate container standing someplace.

Great! I have one on order, I hope it gets here soon!

Thanks!

Laura