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Old 11/30/2007, 01:16 AM
acropora1981 acropora1981 is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Newmarket, ON
Posts: 272
Now, onto brine shrimp decapsulation. Its quite simple. My method comes from Sprung And Delbeeks Reef Aquarium Vol. 3...but there are many links you can google brine decapsulation...

What I do though is soak about 3grams of brine shrimp in 300 ml of cold tap water in a gatorade bottle for an hour, stirring every few minutes. Then I add 180 ml of plain unscented bleach (try to find one around 4% or 5% sodium hypochlorite -basically any plain household bleach). Within about 7 minutes the mixture will change from brown, to white, and then to a yellowy brown. At this point you strain the brine shrimp through a fine mesh net (I use a sieve designed for rotifers), but you can use any very fine mesh net...it has to be around 100 micron or so i believe, or the brine with just go right through. So then I rinse the brine in tap water until most of the bleach smell is gone. Then I put it in a cereal bowl, add some tap water, and add a bunch of white vinegar(neutralizes any remaining bleach). I let it sit with vinegar for like 5 minutes, then I strain the brine out again and rinse with more tap water. The I get a new gatorade or water bottle and make a saturated salt solution in it. The decapsulated brine is put into the super salty water and stored in the fridge. when i want some, i just strain a bit out and put it in the hatchery.

I have a link with pictures, although the amounts they use are slightly different. But its useful to see the color changes (b/c it made me nervous the first time using bleach on fish food!!!) here's the link: http://www.killies.com/Decapsulating.htm
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