Hatching brine shrimp

• pH: 6.8
• Temp: 84
• KH: 5
• GH: 12
• NH4:
• NO2:
• NO3:
• PO4:
• Iron:
• Dosing: 5 mL Flourish, 20 mL Excel
• NO3:PO4 Cumulative Dosing Ratio:

Notes:
I was able to count the angelfish fry this morning, there was approx 35 fry. They started free swimming and swam out of the plastic cup into the breeding net cage. Then I saw a horrible thing: the angelfish were trying to eat? the fry by sucking the fry out through the netting. Although the fry were too big to go through the netting, their tails were still small enough to be sucked out. Once stuck, the fry would struggle as the angelfish picked at the tail, trying to pull the fry out. By the time I was able to jury rig wrapping a large ziploc bag around the netting, at least half of the fry were dead. Yaargh!

This morning, I started up the brine shrimp hatchery, and the first batch should be ready next morning, which I will harvest over the course of the day. I have two setups, so I can start a new batch every morning to ensure there is a constant supply of live shrimp. In the picture, the bottle to the right has brine shrimp eggs incubating, while the bottle on the left is getting prepped for the eggs.

To construct the hatchery, I sawed off the bottom of two 2L soda bottles. I drilled a hole in each of the soda caps, and glued in an airline connector into each hole using plumber's goop as the glue. I then connected airlines to t-line connectors, shutoff valves and an air pump and hooked the airlines to the airline connectors in the soda caps. I turned the soda bottles upside down and used the bottom halves of two more sawed off soda bottles as stands. Using the shutoff valves, I can control the flow of air from the air pump to either of the bottles. While the eggs are incubating, the air from the air pump helps keep the eggs circulating in the water.

Here's what I added to prep the water:

1.5 liter tap water
several drops Amquel+
7 tsp aquarium salt
approx 3/4 tsp baking soda

I then added about 1/8 tsp of brine shrimp that I ordered from http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com, a small batch to start. Since the tempurature in the house is so warm (aquarium temp is 84 degrees), I don't have to worry about heating the water for the brine shrimp.

Hopefully tomorrow, the fry wil still be alive so I can start feeding them!