Artemia Analysis

[Tundra Cuttle]

I am working on designing a senior project for college and I am wondering what are the pros and cons of using brine shrimp as the staple for baby S. bandensis. I know that they are usually too low in HUFA and also protein. My ultimate question: is it healthy for the babies to use enriched or reinforced brine shrimp as the dietary staple? Also are enriched and reinforced Artemia the same?

[Thales]

While it would be interesting to have a study on this, everyone who has tried to use artemia, enriched or not, as a staple food has ended up with non living bandensis.

So, pros:
Cheap
Easy to get
Easy to house

Cons
Dead cuttles


:grin:

[Tundra Cuttle]

That is what I wanted to know. Thank you so much Thales. So what my original plan was to have a self sustaining food chain with Dunaliella salina as a primary producer, the brine shrimp eat this algae, and mysis eat the Artemia. Though I have never done this before I would like to see if I can do this since I have access to an aquarium lab here at my school. What are your thoughts?

[esquid]

How do you plan on keeping the mysis from eating each other?

[Tundra Cuttle]

I read that if they are well fed that cannibalism rates slow. I also figure that I will separate the baby mysis from the rest of the group somehow. Have run through a few ideas to implement separation.

[fishingfozzy]

if you could try to add a V or slatted grate on the bottom of the tank so that the small ones could fall through and the adults couldnt escape. The brine would be able to come through too, get eaten and still have a viable population below. The immatures could live off any brine that die for one reason or another (: idk maybe i am crazy.... it sounded good.

[corpusse]

I don't see any reason to overcomplicate things and feed the brine. Just keep hatching more and feed the mysids newly hatched bbs which is when they are the most nutritious anyway.

[Tundra Cuttle]

Thank you all for your input, it is greatly appreciated!