Can brine shrimp live in an refugium?

[Waleedwale1]

I have a refugium in my biocube and while I was feeding live brine shrimp I wondered if they could live and breed in your refugium,
Sort of like Copepods? Anybody tried this?

 

[basiab]

No reason why not. But you are not going to breed enough to make a meal out of it. Like any critter, some seem to breed in one tank and not another. And even in your tank for a while one type grown then it disappears and another type grows.

 

[zenfish]

no

 

[homegrowncichlid]

YES they can, but they need to be fed phytoplankton (or a blend of chicken egg yolk solution) and there needs to be a way to prevent them from flushing out as the baby brine can't swim against the current. After the adults live out their lifespan (a couple of months) you won't have any recruitment from their offspring.


SO you just need to keep them in their container, (refugium) turn off the pumps during feeding of egg yolk until they clear up the water, then turn the pumps back on to flush water though again. Now that I think about it, this is a pretty dirty operation, which will flush lots of egg waste into your tank, which is why people just keep the brine in a separate container and change out the water every week.

 

[zenfish]

wouldn't the other pods and lifeforms feed on the artemia?

who in their right mind would pour egg yolk into a reef tank refugium?

sure, brine can live in varying salinities but the higher the better.

plus, how would the artemia survive the cosmic rays that power all my equipment in my floating outer space reef?

 

[homegrowncichlid]

Like I said, its possible, but simpler to raise them separately.
If you want to raise little amphipods, go down to the marina at sheepshead bay and scoop up a bag of the seaweed off the floating docks. Plenty of live stuff in there, and might as well fill your refugium with algae.

 

[Dan_P]

Can they live in the refugium? Probably not enough for them to eat, but why don't you throw a couple dozen in and see if they are still there in a couple weeks. In the spirit of Paul_B, do the experiment!

 

[Waleedwale1]

Next time I get some I'll throw a few in the refugium. When I do my upgrade I'll definitely look into setting up a 5 gal for infinite live food lol. Seems cool and my fish love brine.

 

[SaltyJonny3000]

This dude did it.

I think most people don’t because none of us are crazy enough to think that it would work lol