Hi everybody, Joey here again and welcome back

So today I'm going to show you how to build a brine shrimp hatchery

Now this is a project that has been done countless times, and countless ways

But I get asked to give my take on it all the time

So, here it goes...

When it comes to feeding live foods, live brine shrimp are a very popular food choice

Highly nutritious, and a great first food for fry

However I tend to avoid it, typically speaking your fish can sometimes become dependent on it

and a hatchery of any kind may not be as sustainable as you might think

Simply put you might run out, and not be able to keep up with your production

Or you're culture simply might crash

Leaving you with nothing to feed your fish

Personally I Prefer to feed my home made food to fry

as it is something they readily eat, grow fast off of, and I never really run out

With that in mind, if I were to build a brine shrimp hatchery

I would not depend on just one culture

But several running all at different times

I wanna point out that I just use spare supplies that I already had

obviously, the most popular type of a "do it yourself" brine shrimp hatchery start with a water-bottle

For me though, I wanted to run at least five at a time

I needed a holder first, so I grabbed some spare plywood and cut it to size and build a little platform

Tall enough

For the bottles to sit in, and enough room to easily access the bottom of these bottles

I then marked off where I wanted each bottle and ensured that they were closer to the back side than the front

I'll explain why in a minute

I then drilled the holes out with a hole saw that were barely big enough for the bottles to fit into

I wanted them to be snug

I followed this up by painting the stand white

I went with white simply because it's what I had on hand

Painting it will help seal the wood and make it last longer

Now on to the bottles

I used five for this rack

Took the caps off and cut the bottoms of the bottle off

I put the cut-off portions aside as I would use them later

I then took the few "do it yourself" CO2 caps I had previously used on a build that I got on eBay for two for a dollar with free shipping

These were simply screwed on to the bottle ends, like we did in that "do it yourself" CO2 video

Other supplies I had on hand were a small air pump

We don't need a tonne of air for this though

So, almost any size air pump will actually work

some airline hose

Airline manifolds

I only needed one, but they come in various sizes and types

This will allow me to run multiple devices off one air pump and control the air to each, with tiny valves

Cost will vary but you don't need anything fancy

Then some micro-ball valves

These were made by two little fishies

This will allow you to cut off air or water on a 6mm airline

I also use some painters tape and a marker

Then some measuring devices

Again, nothing fancy is needed

A two-litre bottle of tap water ensuring it's de-chlorinated, some rock salt

Any type of salt is actually fine but I buy rock salt for about a dollar a pound (lb)

And it's 100% salt

Then a bit of baking soda