North American Branchiopod Forum

I will be getting some "mammoth fairy shrimp eggs" from EE and Sons and I was looking for hatching instructions. Their site did not say the eggs would come with instructions. I have experience hatching triops 4 times in the past 2 years, and I suspect I must use distilled water with the fairy shrimp also, and start them out in a small shallow container.

I will be feeding them baby fish food (a fine high-protein powder) which floats but also sinks very slowly.

Thanks for your help. Any other hints I should do? Keep the light on them 24 hrs per day like brine shrimp? Keep them warm at 78F degrees?

well Im not familiar with the species "mammoth fairy shrimp" Did they mention how big they get? Probably beavertails, I cant imagine anyone is selling Branchinecta gigas. As for the small hatching container, that only applies to the store bought kit because of the limited amount of detritus that comes with it. I have hatched fairy shimp and Triops in a full 10 gallon aquarium and outside with rain in a kiddie pool. Ive only successfully hatched beavertails outside, I dont know if it was from a lack of eggs in the soil, or if there is something more complex going on. I know some members of this forum have hatched them at home. I would think if there is something more complex going on, that it would be water pressure determining whether they hatch or not and a deeper container would work. In the wild, if a light rain occurs, hatching would lead to a quick death, so perhaps there is something built in.

One other thing to do is agitate the eggs with an airstone for the first 24 hours. This would simulate actual rain. I got that from an actual scientist. As for temperature, as long as they are not a cold species, 70-80F would be fine. I recently hatched tadpole, fairy, and clam shrimp by freezing gallons of distilled water and then inverting them over the tank and letting them drip in as they melted. The early spring rains are generally cool, and sometimes the pool is filled by melting snow.

I think figuring out what actual species they are and where they come from would be most helpful.

I just found your "mammoth fairy shrimp" at arizonafairyshrimp.com

100 Mammoth Winter Fairy Shrimp eggs - $8.00

Mammoth Winter Fairy shrimps can hatch in ice water. Hathcing temperature range is 40 to 72, and the best water temerature is 59F to 68F for adult shrimps. They grow slower and the length is not really longer(1 1/2 inches) than Winter Fairy Shimp, but they are more fatter and male shrimps have larger antennas like the tusks of mammoth.

These are most likely Eubranchipus neglectus or E. vernalis and they are a cold loving species. Im pretty sure they will die if their temperature reaches 70F. I find them in the cold months active under ice even. They are not large fairy shrimp, I see they are calling them "mammoth" because of the "tusks" on the males. They are about the same size as the spinytails at 3/4"-1" max. I have had wild caught specimens live for about a week indoors. I have never hatched any inside.

This is found at the bottom of the page-

Fairy shrimp's color can be little bit different from the pictures above, because their color depends on their food.
Packages contain shrimp eggs mixed with sand, and possibly a few water flea eggs.
The instruction that included in the package is more detailed than the one in this website for each species.

Lets hope the included instructions are fairly accurate, since they obviously just make up names for the species they sell.

Yes, that's what I ordered. Perhaps I'll keep them on ice to keep them cool!

Would you recommend the "1000 redtail fairy shrimp eggs" for $9.00us? I remember I got some in the sand I bought from you and they lived about 6 weeks in room temp. water. Neat little critters.

By "would you recommend" would you say the redtails have a higher hatch rate and are easier to hatch?

Is it ok to feed them First Bites baby fish food? How about floating flake food when they get bigger? I have a high protein worm flake that might be good. They seem to be able to go to the top of the water and find food if I recall.

the redtails are most likely Spinytail Fairy shrimp, Streptocephalus sealii, they are very hardy and the kind you probably got from me. I would say your biggest concern would be overfeeding. I dont actually feed mine, just give them plenty of light, but then I dont keep too many together either. They are filter feeders, and Im not sure if they are actually eating the food, or perhaps the food feeds the algae that they eat. The best food would be green water.

Thanks for the info. It is not possible for me to make green water unless it is outside in July and August. I have tried several times to make greenwater inside and cannot do it. I think the water must be 80F in order for the correct floating algae to grow.

Got my eggs and put them in a CD top with distilled water on 4/25. No hatchlings visible yet today on day 2.

I havent had much luck with green water either.

I have to mention, I put a light over the container 24/7. The light is 10,000 lux at 12 inches, is that too bright? Should I get a plug-in LED light from the store instead? I have LED bulbs for a night light, and also flourescent bulbs for a standard light bulb fixture.

I wonder if UV light levels have anything to do with hatch rate.

My only reason for having a light on long hours is to promote algal growth. I know the fairy shrimp are drawn to the light as well. I dont know anything about LED lights. I use compact fluorescents on my 10 gallon tanks. 60W equivalent, actual wattage is 17W I believe. I have lost them to overheating from an incandescent bulb.

The winter fairy shrimp did not hatch. Any guesses or hints for me? I even kept the 100CD container top outside at night when temps hit 40-50F.

So I bought some redtail fairy shrimp, used distilled water again. These need temps of 72-86F to hatch so I put a 60w light bulb on the container (100cd stack top) and used a thermometer, which I checked 6 times per day. Also put a herp warming pad under it to keep the temperature up at night.

After 48 hrs nothing has hatched yet. I can see baby triops about 24 hrs after adding water but I can't see any baby fairy shrimp even 48 hrs after adding water. The triops are small but not impossible to see. I even inspected some suspicious spots with a jewelers loupe. No fairy shrimp, though the eggs looked interesting, like brown golf balls.

Any hints as to what I can do to hatch these? Add baking soda? How much? Should I add Epson salts? (MgSO4)

These redtails come from an alkali lake I believe the retail website said. Or perhaps I read a report on Arizona fairy shrimp on another website. Still, the fairy shrimp should like the same environment.

I might try rainwater next. It should be soft.

I have no idea how to hatch bought fairy shrimp. The only things I ever hatch are from soil I collect locally. I just use distilled water inside. I have left a tank outside and it filled with rain and got Triops, and I have put soil in a container and let it rain and got fairy shrimp. I think the best way to hatch branchiopods collected elsewhere would be to have soil from the location they were collected.

Update: I saved some of the redtail fairy shrimp eggs. They were in my fridge for about 10 months. This spring, around May 15, I started hatching them. Hatch rated seemed much better than last year. Even after 6 weeks, I'm still seeing new babies in the original hatching container!

So I think the cold spell in my fridge really helped the eggs.

Well, many of my fairy shrimp in my kiddie pool got eaten by dragonfly larva, so I removed all the larva. They seem to be doing fine now, and I added ostracods and daphnia moina to this pool. Oddly enough the algae that was there 4 weeks ago is completely gone. 4-5 fairy shrimp certainly cannot account for that, though it has been cooler (70-75F) here in the past 7 days.

Probably the daphnia, they will multiply like crazy to feed on algae, then numbers will reduce to a sustainable population.

The water in this kiddie pool has been clear for about 2 weeks, and I just got my live daphnia. I put some in this kiddie pool, which was very hot (about 90-100F), in another barrel full of green water, and in a fish tank with no fish (just shrimp and snails). The daphnia moina did not seem to survive. I cannot find any in the kiddie pool 2 days later. Just lots of ostracods, 3 redtail fairy shrimp, no daphnia.

I cannot seen any daphnia in the barrel, but perhaps they prefer the middle of the water column. Water is about 3.5 feet deep and very green, so I can't see more than 1 inch into the water. They could be anywhere in there.