Tropical Fish Crazy for Brine Shrimp (Artemia)

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If you are looking for some really cool food to feed your tropical fish, check out brine shrimp. Brine shrimp are nutritious, easy to feed to tropical fish and not that expensive. They make an ideal treat for your fish and frogs too. Brine shrimp are also often called by the scientific name of artemia, sea monkeys and fairy shrimp, which might help you locate more information about these little crustaceans. Learn about the benefits and fun of feeding your fish brine shrimp.

Most of the artemia come from around the Great Salt Lake and San Francisco areas. Although, the photo is blown up a tad, you can see this delicate crustacean has an average length of just 1/2 inch. They have tiny little appendages, 11 pairs to be exact that allow them to glide through the water. Brine shrimp actually eat microscopic organisms in the water such as bacteria, yeast and algae.

Fish love brine shrimp whether it is freeze-dried, frozen or live. Of course the best is live, because your tropical fish will just go nuts after you pour a little into the tank. A lot of hobbyist feed their fish a base diet of flaked food, which is fine, but boy, give platies, swordtails, monos, angels or tetras live artemia (brine shrimp) and your fish will just go wild.

Baby fish can also eat tiny brine shrimp eggs or the young larva called nauplii. Small, medium and large sized tropical fish all enjoy brine shrimp. In our community tank there never has been any leftovers. Within a short time the fish in our tank round up every last one of them.

I have never purchased brine shrimp eggs and tried to hatch them, but I understand it really is not too difficult. Might be kind of fun to experiment with. We have always purchased frozen brine shrimp or live shrimp from local fish shops around the corner, but I am sure you can easily get some online these days.

The frozen brine shrimp is great because you just break off as small of a portion as you need for each feeding and put the rest back in the freezer for later. Check out frozen or live brine shrimp and see if your tropical fish don't just go nuts.