DIY Brine Shrimp Hatchery
Build This Inexpensive Artemia Breeder for Your Aquarium Fish
Baby brine shrimp (Artemia) are an excellent (and in some cases essential) food source for young and/or hard-to-keep marine fish in the home aquarium.
Any saltwater hobbyist who advances beyond the most basic aspects of the hobby will, at some point, want to acquire a brine shrimp hatchery. While kits such as the popular San Francisco Bay Brand Brine Shrimp Hatchery are available ($11.99 from Marine Depot without the air pump), it’s quite simple to fashion one for yourself. Here’s how.
Make the Brine Shrimp Hatchery
You will start by fabricating an appropriate hatching chamber. This needn’t be any more complicated than cleaning out a clear plastic, two-liter bottle (save the cap) and cutting the bottom off of it (careful not to cut yourself in the process).
Connect the Hatchery to the Air Pump
Drill a hole in the bottle’s cap for a piece of plastic tubing. Insert the plastic tubing into the cap and fix it in place with a silicon adhesive (about an inch of tubing should extend up into the bottle). Attach the other end of the tubing to a small air pump such as a Tom Aquatics Stellar S-20 Air Pump (approximately $15). Some aquarists choose to also place an air control valve in the plastic tubing between the air pump and the hatching chamber to control the air flow.
Hang or Mount Your Hatchery
You can either hang your hatching chamber or make a base for it. If you want to hang it, make three holes in the hatching chamber about three-quarters of an inch below the open end of the bottle (the bottle will hang inverted—cap down). Attach string to these three holes and hang the hatching chamber in a convenient location where it can be easily illuminated by a 60W bulb no more than half a foot away from the hatching chamber.
Alternatively, you can fashion a base from an inverted Tupperware or plastic bowl from which you have cut a hole in the center into which you may seat the hatching chamber. The hole in the center of the base needs to be wider than the neck of the hatching chamber and narrower than its widest point. A notch should be cut from the rim of the base for the plastic tubing. Again, place the hatching chamber in a convenient location where it can be easily illuminated by a 60W bulb no more than half a foot away from the hatching chamber.
What’s Next?
The next article in this series will cover where to purchase brine shrimp eggs and how to harvest the baby brine shrimp.
