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amashun  Insufferable Know It All Joined: 10 Jan 2008 Total posts: 11608 Location: HK/Australia Age: 80 Gender: Unknown
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 Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 09:57:42 AM Post subject: how to Decapsulating Artemia? |
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Decapsulated artemia offer a variety of advantages to normal encyted artemia, including an increased hatch rate and a more nutritious newly hatched artemia for your animals to consume. This is due to the fact that the artemia does not have to struggle to hatch out of its hard outer shell (called a “chorion”) therefore uses up less energy and therefore less of its yolk reserves. If you are feeding our newly hatched artemia (less than 24 hours old) then decapsulated artemia eggs are by far the best way to go. Another, possibly lifesaving comparison between the two, is that there are no empty egg shells floating around in your culture chamber once the artemia hatch. These artemia shells can cause increased mortality rates in larval fish if the shells get caught in the mouths and throats of the fish, causing them to starve and subsequently die.
Decapsulating Artemia cysts is a very simple process, one that anyone can do at home. You just need a few household items and to follow a few very simple steps.
What you will need –
1. Small plastic container (about 500ml)
2. Liquid Chlorine (pool chlorine works best – available at any pool supply store for about 70c per liter)
3. Artemia Cysts
4. 100 micron plankton mesh
5. Teaspoon
6. Tapwater (200ml)
7. Rubber gloves
Methodology
1. Place about 20g of artemia cysts (approx. 4 heaped tablespoons) into the small plastic container
2. Add approx. 200ml tap water to the container and use the teaspoon to stir the artemia/water mix thoroughly
3. Let the eggs hydrate for a minimum of 1 hour and a maximum of 2 hours stirring the water occasionally (every 15 minutes or so). Do not continue with the decapsulation if you hydrate the eggs longer than 2 hours as you will then kill the artemia.
4. Be sure to read the appropriate MSDS on Chlorine before starting and follow all of the health and safety guidelines. Also ensure that you are wearing rubber gloves when handling chlorine to avoid contact with your skin.
Once Hydrated, add approx. 200ml of liquid chlorine. Be sure to do this stage in a well ventilated area as the chloring fumes can be noxious.
5. Stir continuously with the teaspoon. The eggs will change from brown to white, then finally to orange. This is the chlorine dissolving the hard outer shell, or chorion, of the brine shrimp egg. Once 90-95% of the cysts are orange, pour the mix through the 100 micron plankton mesh and rinse thoroughly until there is no trace of chlorine.
6. Remove excess moisture from the decapsulated eggs and place in a airtight bag or container.
7. Store refrigerated untill needed. Decapsulated cysts have a normal refrigerated shelf life of 6-8 weeks so be sure to only decapsulate enough to last you for this time period.
Once you have decapsulated your artemia, you can either hatch them out normally to feed to your larval/juvenile fish, grow them out to adults in approximately 3 weeks by feeding them a nutritious algae feed such as tetraselmis or phyto diet, or you can even feed the decapsulated eggs directly to your reef aquarium – both your fish and your invertebrates will love them.
One more thing. If you plan on raising your artemia beyond the 24 hour mark to feed to your aquarium it is vitally important to ensure that the artemia themselves are as nutritious as possible. If your artemia have not been fed recently then they will have an extremely low nutritional profile and be of virtually no benefit to your inhabitants (i normally compare this to eating the shells of an egg compared to eating the egg itself). Ideally feed your artemia to your aquarium approximately 1 hour after you have fed them with the algae concentrates mentioned above. This way they will have full bellies and you will be delivering extremely nutritious algae to your animals. If you are feeding your artemia to larval or juvenile fish, it is also strongly recommended to further enrich the artemia with Highly Unsaturated Fatty Acids (HUFA) similar to what can be found in our Plankton Enrich product. This way you are providing your animals with an extremely nutritious diet which will increase survivability, colouration and growth rates.
If after reading this you are sold on the benefits of decapsulated artemia, but either dont have the time or space to dacapsulate them yourself, you can always buy them already decapsulated from us here.
Source
http://reefculture.com.au/blog/2009/09/the-benefits-of-decapsulating-artemia/
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amashunInsufferable Know It All Joined: 10 Jan 2008 Total posts: 11608 Location: HK/Australia Age: 80 Gender: Unknown
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| Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 12:53:05 AM Post subject: |
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| i've done it today and it seems pretty easy. will take some picture for the next lot i make and post it up on the breeding section because this is really good for baby fishes.
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| CWright Drunken reefer Joined: 17 Dec 2007 Total posts: 10832 Location: Where ever there's a VB Gender: Male
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| Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 01:22:37 AM Post subject: |
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| Cool, looking forward to seeing how you go.
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| Will The True Disturbed Reefer Age: 29 Gender: Male
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amashunInsufferable Know It All Joined: 10 Jan 2008 Total posts: 11608 Location: HK/Australia Age: 80 Gender: Unknown
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