Ocean Nutrition INSTANT baby brine shrimp

[Cubic]

We started testing today with an Ocean Nutrition product called 'Instant baby brine shrimp'. We have always used live baby brine shrimp (artemia nauplii) as a food source for our moon jellies but we understand that hatching live artemia every day is a bit of a chore and to much work for most hobbyists. Ocean Nutrition have a good reputation for quality marine foods so we have high hopes for this product.

Ocean Nutrition INSTANT baby brine shrimp

Below is the information given on this product form the ocean nutrition website:

Baby brine shrimp (nauplii of Artemia salina) are widely used in aquariums as food during the first stages of delicate fish and invertebrates. Ocean Nutrition has developed Instant Baby Brine Shrimp, a revolutionary off the shelf product that allows you to use brine shrimp when and where you need them!

The whole process of hatching brine shrimp at home can be tedious and cumbersome. More often than not, due to variables such as improper storage, the hatching rate can be rather disappointing. The next challenge facing the hobbyist is synchronizing the hatching time with first feeding of the fry. Those days are over!

Instant Baby Brine Shrimp consists entirely of sterile newborn nauplii in an aqueous solution. The nauplii have very good buoyancy, as if you are dealing with a live product!

The product can be kept and stored at room temperature. Once open, the product must be kept in the refrigerator. To avoid any quality issues make sure that the security strip is complete at the time of purchase. Ideal for delicate small fish, fish fry and invertebrates. One bottle contains in excess of 1.5 million Artemia nauplii. Developed in collaboration with the Artemia Reference Centre (of the Ghent University in Belgium). Does not cloud the water.

Ingredients:
Baby Brine Shrimp (Artemia nauplii).

Typical analysis:
Protein 9.3 %
Fibre 0.2 %
Fat 2.2 %
Ash 1.2 %
Moisture 85.0 %

[Cubic]

Initial tests are promising with a high catch rate by the jellyfish. After about 15 minutes of feeding their stomachs were quite full. Over the next few weeks we will be able to see how much the jellyfish grow in direct comparison to jellyfish fed on live baby brine shrimp.

[Cubic]

The jellyfish we have been feeding have shown some growth although not as much as we see from jellys being fed live baby brine shrimp. The jellies seem in good health and are pulsing well.

[shadeone]

any more status updates on this product?

also what dosage are you giving them? I plan on using this product almost exclusively for three small (1-2 inch) jellies and would love to know the proper amount to be giving them :)

[Dr. T]

After a couple of weeks of trial, we found jellyfish stopped growing with this feed. Although it is good to have this feed for whenever you are out of live/frozen artemia nauplii, we would not recommend this product for main food to moon jellies.

About the dosage of this feed, we were feeding approx. 1.5ml to 10 small (2-3") moon jellies. Mix this feed with seawater before feed, and feed little by little until the stomachs of jellies get full. You will see bright orange colour in their stomachs when they fed full.

We are working on alternative food for moon jellies, which we sent some samples of to European retailers.

Regards