Frozen or live?

Discussion in 'Fish Food' started by rc_mcwaters3, Dec 25, 2010.

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  1. rayjay

    rayjay Gigas Clam

    Joined:
    Jun 8, 2004
    Messages:
    886
    Location:
    London, ON, Canada
    Actually, juvenile and adult brine shrimp grown from cysts from the Great Salt Lake have excellent protein values (49.7 - 62.5% DW), higher than most flake/freeze dried/pelleted foods you might be using in your tanks.
    They don't have much fatty acid profile though so that is why people have used Selco type emulsions for enrichment purposes.
    In fact though, Selco is not on my preferred list for enrichment as the enulsions are not a good storage form, and the emulsions are only enriching the fatty acids.
    The best I've come across to date is Dan's Food with/without Beta Glucan available from seahorsesource.com and is suitable for any enrichment feeding, corals included, for those that feed on brine shrimp and rotifers.
    If you want to specifically target certain things, you can use Algamac Protein Plus for higher protein, or Algamac 3050 for fatty acid boosting as the 3050 has a higher level of DHA than even DHA Selco.
    You can vary the two to get different profiles for any specific need you may have, and the Algamacs, being powder, store much much longer than the emulsions as it can be kept in the freezer.
    Dan's Food uses the Algamac Products as the base values and then adds specific other items to enhance the product.
    You can also enrich artemia with specific vitamins if needed, and, by emulsifying liquid medicines you can get the meds to the fish that need them by again using the artemia, with much better results than just adding the meds to the water column.
    But again, growing them is only for when you don't live in the US where you can economically buy them from livebrineshrimp.com.