Product: Brine Shrimp Shrimpery
Manufacturer: San Francisco Bay
Price: $8.49
Pros: A very useful brine shrimp hatchery that is very easy to use for beginners.
Cons: Each packet only lasts 3-5 days (after hatching), and additional packets run nearly $1 a piece.


I recently checked out the San Francisco Bay Brand Shrimpery right after I had tried out Tom's Continuous Hatch N' Feeder. The timing was good, for not only do both of these items focus on creating baby brine shrimp for you to feed your fish, but they also are built on the same basic concept. The concept is this: Freshwater weighs less than Saltwater.

The two products put that into effect in different ways. The Shrimpery is a small kit of only 3 different pieces. There is a black box with a hole in the middle at the top. The box top comes off, making a total of 2 pieces for the box. The other item is an inverted clear plastic cup. The way it works is that you fill up the box with water and add the hatch kit. The hatch kit contains the correct amount of salt for the brine shrimp eggs to hatch, and it also contains the brine shrimp eggs.

You then fill up the clear plastic cup with water, and turn it upside down on the box. (The cup is mostly blocked off at the top, so you won't run into a mess) Since freshwater weighs less than saltwater, the saltwater will not mix in the tube. Brine Shrimp will swim towards light, and since the box they are born in is entirely black, after about 20 hours, the tube will be full of baby brine shrimp. You can add these directly to your freshwater aquarium, refill the tube and then place it back on the Shrimpery. For just over 3 days you should have TONS of live food for your baby fish.

I was amazed at how easy this kit was to use. Typically you will find kits online of how to hatch brine shrimp, and they all require a pump or aeration of some sort. I didn't even realize that you could hatch brine shrimp without something moving the water around. The Shrimpery is so simple it is frightening. When I first set it up, I stepped back and thought "that's it? I'm done." The number of shrimp produced was very high, and they were immediately put to good use. I highly recommend it to any person who has fry and is looking into a better food for raising them, especially through those first few days of life when fish are used to eating the first moving thing that they can see.

The only real drawback I could see with this item is the cost of the additional packets. At $1 a piece, they are very steep, especially for someone who might want to have baby brine available 20 days of a month. In addition, those who need a non-stop supply of baby brine shrimp, would need to have multiple feeders, which might be a difficulty, and certainly a bit more pricey than hatching them on your own.

However for the beginner, those who want a very simple way of getting baby brine, and those who only need baby brine occasionally, I think the Shrimpery is one of the best new products to come out in a long time.

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