Eh, anywhere from a quarter cup to a half cup per gallon (~1.012-1.025 SG). Make sure that you use marine salt and not aquarium/table salt!

 

Hi @ichthyogeek

Could you elaborate on why you suggest marine salt and not aquarium salt please? I've been using API Aquarium Salt which has dosing instructions on the pack for hatching brine shrimp. But whilst I can hatch them no problem, I've struggled to get them to grow out for more than about 4 days, so just wondering....

For info @TheOne, this is the dosing instructions on API aquarium salt for hatching BS: Add eight tablespoonfuls for each gallon of water.

Regards, James

 

So, aquarium salt is not the same as marine salt. Aquarium salt is (I think) just sodium chloride and maybe some magnesium chloride thrown in. To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't help with buffering the pH, alkalinity, or a number of other factors that marine organisms (which I will, for simplicity's sake, also include brine shrimp under) require to stay alive. A clownfish, for example, would not thrive in an aquarium that had the equivalent amount of aquarium salt as marine salt. Marine salt, however, is a number of different salts. There's calcium and magnesium ions, but there's also potassium and bicarbonate/carbonate ions as well. You can hatch out brine shrimp no problem in aquarium salt, since the key points towards hatching the shrimp are light, heat, and water with a certain amount of salt in the water (doesn't matter what kind). But when you're raising the brine shrimp, they're adapted to all of the different salts that you find in marine salt mixes as opposed to just the sodium/magnesium chloride probably found in aquarium salt. As an aside, if I remember correctly, four days for me is around the point when the BBS start dying of starvation if you don't feed them the right foods. I'd suggest a live phytoplankton mix like OceanMagik or similar if you're culturing them out.

@Blue_Ridge_Reef, when feeding, I've found that if you're adding live phytoplankton, it doesn't really matter how heavily you feed, since the phyto does the job of helping filter the water as well. However, when feeding dead foods (yeast, spirulina, etc.), you just need to feed very lightly, and there's not really a need to filter the water as you would a fish or shrimp tank. Also, a lot of people tend to overstock the buckets when starting out with brine shrimp culturing; really a drop or two of concentrated BBS is probably more than enough to get one started, as opposed to dropping in an entire batch worth.

 

My question is how much salt will I need for 5 gallons of water?

2 cups of Instant Ocean or similar sea salt mix to a 5 gallon bucket of fresh water will get you awfully close to 1.023 specific gravity. Brine shrimp are a lot easier to hatch than to raise, since they require feeding and rather clean water. The shrimp nauplii are so tiny that filtering and water changing are challenging.

 

My own experience with rearing Artemia to full adults is that the plain pickling salt I use for hatching is perfectly adequate to raise to full size in about 3 weeks. Either hatch eggs at about 1.018 specific gravity or use leftover water from your hatcher. You will find that growing and adult brine shrimp thrive at a higher salinity (about 1.022-1.025). Feeding with suspended yeast or Spirulina powder (or blenderized spinach) makes raising easy. Even a 1 gallon jar will allow you to raise several dozen adults. Keep the container in good light, feed LIGHTLY to avoid fouling the water and add an airline with only a few bubbles per second. I'd only suggest a small amount of sea salt mix if you need to buffer acid conditions - normally it isn't necessary.

Here's a link to a "how to" grow brine shrimp to adult size by David Ramsey, who's produced quite a few practical vids.