Artemia

[Dave T]

hi all,

This year we have kept a few hundred fry that hatched 9 days ago.... there now about 6-10mm in size.

with artemia was wondering could any of you give me some good pointers.

last year I grew our own fry feed in barrell of green water collected it & fed it to the fry, only thing is that it soon ran out
and couldnt sustain the fry for more than a couple of weeks.

this year w'eve gone down the Artemia road, aerating and hatching cysts in aerated bottles. 2 days later they can be seen with lots of eye squinting swimming round..I then simply pour the contents straight into the fry tank.
the fry seem to be growing ok some bigger than others , you can see the Artemia inside the bellys of some and not in others.

questions.... is there a larger size Artemia cysts that can be got to suit koi of 2 weeks. is so what size , where from
Is it normal to have lots of brown shells floating around in the Artemia as the fry tank is full of them as they wont pass through to the filter.
Should I let the artemia grow or will it grow beyond a few days to a size suitable for the fry....is a dusting of spirulina powder ok?

any help appreciated
thanks
Dave

[eds]

Don't bother! The main nutrition in artemia is from the orange food store in them. After a few hours that is used by the shrimp to grow and the nutritional value will plummet. For tropical fish when they get older I keep feeding artemia daily (even the adult tropicals love them) and add some powdered and then granulated food as they get older. I don't see why that wouldn't work with koi too.

[vippymini]

how about daphnia?
we have a 220 gallon tank in the garden that is full of the stuff, you just dunk your net in and pull out a few thousand daily. they breed so prolifically that the number of them in the tank is replaced as the day goes by.
to start the stock off we took a visit to a local pond and netted out a few. also to back up the start off numbers we bought a couple of 50p bags of live daphnia from an aquatic shop.