Baby brine shrimp are the best live food there is for early growth of fry. These crustaceans have a large yolk attached to them when they are hatched. This is an excellent source of fatty acids to help your fish to grow fast.

There are many global sources for brine shrimp in the world with almost as many different species. Early production of Brine shrimp occurred in San Francisco Bay area, and then more sources of production were utilized at Great Salk Lakes area. At the present, there are also large sources in Australia, China and the Philippines.

One of the keys for the best shrimp is its initial size. When born the San Francisco variety is the smallest. Small size is best for most fish to consume when they are young fry. When fry are young, they need the smallest possible source of proteins to grow large and fast. Some smaller species of fish can not eat even the smallest shrimp, so that will tell you it takes a very small creature for these fry to eat.

Brine shrimp also grow rapidly when young. They molt very quickly and promptly become larger. This will require you to do large water changes and you will need to add a source of food for the shrimp if you want them to continue to grow to a large size. If you use the best source of food for your fry, their size doubles most every day for 2 weeks.

These micro critters can be easily hatched for your fry. I use a 2-liter soft drink bottle. You can cut off the bottom of the bottle and place the top inside the bottom. This is a way to make the inverted bottle stand on its own. You should still be careful with this top-heavy container. Next I use a rubber stopper to place in the mouth of the bottle. The stopper is drilled and fitted with rigid plastic tubing. Drill the stopper with a small a hole as possible so you will not have any leaks. The rigid tubing I used is able to have standard air line tubing fit over it. Next, run 2 feet of tubing to an inline valve. Use a plastic value so it does not corrode from the exposure to salt water. The tubing is then attached to my air pump. In the inside of the bottle I use a small piece of tubing and curl it down to the mouth of the bottle. This is very important to get the tube to the rubber cork; this keeps any settled eggs agitated, so they stay floating around.

When my eggs have hatched, I stop the air for 15 minutes or so. Disconnect the tubing from the air pump and place the tubing in a metal (gold colored mesh) coffee filter. This has a handle inside, which is used to secure the tubing in place, so it does not slip out. The coffee filter I got was from Wal-Mart; it is the reusable kind. I have a clear glass vase that this filter will wedge into the opening. The filter fits about halfway down into the mouth of the vase. Then I walk away for about 15, or so, minutes (it does take awhile for the 1 1/2 quarts of water to drain). Next, I pour the strained water back into the bottle and leave it for any other shrimp to hatch. I only do this for a 1 day period, after that most of the shrimp have already hatched or will not hatch. The coffee filter is very easy to take to the water faucet and you can rinse the shrimp out easy this way.

Feed sparingly, you do not want to make the fry have to hunt too much to find the brine. Keep them coming a little at a time. Most of the time in my tanks, which have 1 tablespoon of salt per five gallons, the shrimp will live for 2 to 3 hours. By this time, I usually have feed most of this hatch to my fry. It is better to feed young fresh brine to fry, so I keep the hatches coming at one a day. I start a new batch every night. Some days I can get two feeding out of the one bottle?

One thing you will want to do is feed your fish some flake food 10 to 15 minutes before you feed the brine. This will slow down the fish's digestive tract. By slowing the flow through the digestive tract, you will allow for more of the brine's proteins to be utilized. In addition, it is believed that the brine can act as a laxative and push it self through too quickly.

Well, grow them big and fast.