For several years, I have been using my new easy “dish method” for hatching brine shrimp eggs. No air pumps. No daily saltwater preperation and disposal. The dish method works perfectly for my small-scale setup–feeding a couple of batches of guppy fry and juveniles. My previous (2020) article ‘Hatching and Culturing Brine Shrimp (Artemia)’ describes various hatching methods. However, it does not include the dish method, which I had not yet developed. It is by far the easiest. Enjoy!
Small bowls are a simple, inexpensive way of keeping aquarium plants and moving on to bigger things. A YouTube video (‘The Simplest Planted Aquarium With Diana Walstad’) shows the setup of 1-gal and 5-gal planted bowls. Lisa and John Hudson of KGTropicals (keepfishkeeping.com) made this happen. Video is a fantastic learning piece for those of you rightly intimidated by setting up aquascaped tanks, using soil in aquariums, or maintaining high-tech tanks. Photo shows me and Lisa with our bowls. She’s got the bigger one, but I’ve got three little ones. Not surprisingly, all bowls are doing great since setup!
My new article ‘Potted Plants for Fish Breeding Tanks’ describes maximizing plant growth so that I can keep 10 fish breeding tanks without any filters. Keeping plants “mobile” (i.e., in pots) makes it doable. I measured no NH3, no NO2- and almost no nitrates in the 10 tanks over the course of several months.
My article Guppy Longevity (10 pages) answers the question of why fancy guppies don’t live that long. It puts much of the blame for guppy fragility onto the common practice of using only young fish as breeders. The long-term result is detrimental genetic changes. Since I started using only older fish as breeders, I’ve increased the longevity of my fish from ~6 months to over 12 months. Photo shows a 15-month old male and female. Still room for improvement, but this is progress.
Hatching and Growing Brine Shrimp (Artemia) is–I believe–the ultimate brine shrimp article for aquarium hobbyists. Starts with hatching eggs in a soup bowl without aeration. Moves onto ‘hatching dishes’ that automatically separate nauplii from shells, making harvesting fresh nauplii incredibly easy. More new subjects include cold storage of harvested nauplii, feeding fish decapsulated eggs, why lower salinity works best, and growing shrimp out for 3 days. Author discusses the many factors (osmoregulation, iron nutrition, sensitivity to heavy metals, etc) that affect hatching success.
Diana Walstad's Books and Articles 