[sbo80]

So I can't be the only one thinking this, but I can't find anything on the net. Can two different sieve size nets be stacked to separate bbs and hatched eggs? Through google I see several chinese etc. sites with nested nets etc suggesting it can be done, but there's nothing on youtube or anywhere else in english. I figure if it was that simple, it would be "the way" to separate, not using little airlines to try to siphon out or other soda bottle homebrew setups. There are readily available sieve sizes from 900 down to 75 microns, but since I've not done hatching I'm not sure the size difference is enough that would work in practice, or you'd still get a lot of intermixing.

 

[ichthyogeek]

I mean, technically you could? But it seems like a lot of work and you'd either lose brine shrimp (undesirable), or still have cysts mixed in (even more undesirable).

What is the real problem behind this post? Is it that you don't have the time to separate out shrimp from shells? That you need to be more direct about not getting cysts in the brine shrimp?

 

[sbo80]

I'm currently using the brine shrimp direct hatching "dish", which works well enough already, just thinking of other ways to do it. A typical full "scoop" of eggs makes more shrimp than my two tanks could possibly eat, so I'm trying to look for a simpler way to do smaller quantities more frequently. Seems like a whole lot less work to me. Put eggs in any jar (not some ridiculous contraption) with a bubbler, wait a day or so, pour jar through sieves. No light, no hoses and valves, etc. So I don't care about losing some, and don't care about a few eggs getting in, just want to separate out most. I know a one-time pour is going to lose a lot of un-hatched-yet eggs, but again, I don't really need them all to hatch.

 

[ichthyogeek]

So...which ridiculous contraption are you talking about? The hatcher or the upside down soda bottles?

It sounds kinda like you just want to use decapsulated brine shrimp eggs, since you just rinse those after hatching and then you're basically done.

I think you'd get a lot of intermixing with the sieves. That or really damaged bbs. You'd have to first examine what hatched cysts look like, and then see if they all have some sort of commonality (are they all split in half? Do they all look like pacman?).

 

[ghyti]

Angels Plus sells brine shrimp sieves Or you could use a reusable coffee filter.. Be careful, as some of the coffee filters have holes that are too big and let the shrimp through. I buy several different kind and toss the ones that don't work.

 

[infolific]

I use this: Hatchery Dish

It's the simplest solution I've found. No heater, no bubbler, and the shrimp separate themselves from the eggs. Depending on how many eggs I add, I can keep the thing going for a week+ without changing the water i.e. I add eggs in the morning and harvest the hatchings from the previous day for at least a week. I can also stagger the addition of the eggs so that I can harvest multiple times the following day. It won't produce high volumes though so not the best for a multi-tank fish room.

 

[sbo80]

I have been using the hatchery dish. It works ok. Since nobody asked I did a small experiment. I can verify that a 475 micron mesh does not stop eggs or bbs. 120 micron mesh stops both. I might get an in-between size to try, but this didn't work and I ended up with eggs and bbs mixed together. Unrelated, but the 475 size does work well to filter out adult daphnia and let the smaller ones through (to be put back in the jar to continue growing).

 

[Plinkploop]

Good to know about the daphnia, about to get some cultures myself. Thank you for sharing your experiment results!!