Fairy shrimp

[halak]

I just found something called fairy shrimp that is supposedly good fry food especially because they live in freshwater. Has anyone heard of them?

http://www.arizonafairyshrimp.com/eggs.html

[PadreJP]

I always thought fairy shrimp were just another name for brine shrimp.

[SCMurphy]

Fairy shrimp are most often found in vernal ponds and ponds that don't have fish. They are not very fast swimming, delicate critters.

[kerokero]

Sound like interesting live foods... Are the various fairy shrimps and clam shrimps something worth trying to raise up and feed out? I like the fact that in the raising instructions listed on the website above, they don't need salt water like the brine shrimp... They don't seem too different than what I've seen for Daphnia (which evidently can be from similar environments). Sounds like another fun invertabrate my aquatic critters may enjoy...

[halak]

This is why fairy shrimp are not a popular live food:

"...their eggs are not as easy to collect in the wild as the floating encysted eggs are with the marine Artemia species. With the fershwater species, the eggs sink.....These species are not able to tolerate the warm tropical temperatues of the aquarium, and quickly die when exposed to tropical temperatures....many species are critically endangered."

Source: Hellweg, Michael: Culturing Live Foods, 2008 p. 146

[mab]

Source: Hellweg, Michael: Culturing Live Foods, 2008 p. 146

Mike is the PVAS November Speaker - door prize for the meeting is the book cited.

[kerokero]

Huh.... I can see how that would be true for some of the species. Citing the website listed above, some of the species they sell (I'm assuming they are legal to be running the business) definately are sensitive to higher temps... the Dry Lake Fairies like 60-100F (care says 72-80F is optimal), Winter Fairies 59F to 68F and can survive freezing temps (egg hatching in 40F and below), Mammoth Fairies 59F to 68F with hatching 40 to 72F but evidently tricky. The Dry Lake Fairies sound like the best ones for food for more tropical species. The Dry Lake Clam Shrimp also sound like a viable species to try, but I'll skip the other species.

Could be cool... as long as I had eggs stored I could be deliquent and forget about them Kinda expensive as an occassional treat unless I made sure to breed them and save my own eggs.

The book looks awesome! It's on my list of must get books. Need to double check my list for some other must haves, then it looks like I'll be doing an Amazon order!