Brine Shrimp VS Daphnia?

[tmorgan]

Just wondering (Not sure if this was already somewhere... but didn't see it) which is easier? What are the benefits of daphnia vs brine shrimp?

I just ordered some brine shrimp eggs and I think that they will be fairly easy to raise. Daphnia also seems as though it would be easy. Just wondering what everyones' thoughts are on this!

 

[morphyrichards]

Daphnia will survive indefinitely in fresh water until they get eaten whereas brine shrimp die after a few hours and need to be removed...

 

[Nathan]

They are both easy to raise. To my mind, brine shrimp have two major advantages: you don't have to keep a culture going, and all the shrimp in the culture are basically the same size at any given time, so it's easy to get appropriately sized feeders for your animals. Daphnia, on the other hand, have the advantage of surviving in freshwater, so you don't have to worry about uneaten individuals decomposing in the tank. They may also establish themselves in the tank, which may be a pro or a con depending on your preferences.

 

[tmorgan]

Oh ok I see. Thank you for getting back to me so quickly! I am actually interested in both. I am going to try the BBS first. I am going to be getting two juveniles soon, but later on I may get some eggs to try out. So I want to play around with the BBS first to make sure that I get the knack of it.
Maybe later I will be trying the daphnia.

 

[DR]

all the shrimp in the culture are basically the same size at any given time.

All depends what size food you intend to feed, there are many species of 'daphnia' which can be offered when a specific size is preferred.

 

[Nathan]

True, there are daphnids with different adult sizes, but at any given time in a culture of any given species you will have both adults and juveniles at various sizes. A brine shrimp batch will be more consistent in size, all being the same age.

 

[oceanblue]

Both are good, both have problems. Despite reading all the advice how to maintain daphnia my colonies always seem to crash just when I need them. Badly stored brine shrimp eggs fail to hatch.

I find I use more brine shrimp than Daphnia, I use a 6g/liter salty solution to hatch them, attract them to light and pipette them into new 6g/l water and any not immediately needed are refrigerated. They survive for 2 weeks in this strength saline in the fridge without significant mortality, at 3 weeks half are dead. The amount of brine shrimp I hatch has dropped since I now do not have loads of dead surplus shrimps.