This just might be the best fry (and adult) food to become available to the betta hobby in years.

Easy to hatch in "fresh" water, slow swimming so the fry can catch them, stays alive in fresh water until eaten, very nutritious (64% protein), and can be raised to adulthood in "green" water to feed adult bettas.

They are available from Blue Betta's web site. (Suporn)

I copied and pasted the ad from his site below

**************************************************************

Baby Fairy Shrimp ( BFS)
Monday, 26 March 2007

If it is very hard to get daphnia or any life food for your fry I strongly recommend you Baby Fairy Shrimp Egg (BFS). Very simple the most easiest way to feed your fry with this miracle thing. With the very small size of the BFS your betta fry and eat easily. The BFS can swim around in fresh water and can live with in your spawn tank so they will servive and stay until your fry eat them. Because BFS swim slowly around that is the best for the fry to catch and eat them. The BFS Egg can keep dry for years so when ever you want to feed your fry just simple follow the step below.


Very simple friend :)



The Baby Fairy Shrimp Egg you can keep dry for 1-2 years so it is your life food on your hand.



First, Prepare your glass tank. I use my betta jar which is 4x6x6 inc fill in with fresh water or your drinking water is also good. The water level is not higher than 10 cm and the water temperature is about 25-35 degree C.



Second, You just put a little bit BFS Egg about 1 tea spoon into the glass tank you prepared.



All the dry egg will floting on top.



You have to try deep all the egg into the bottom of the tank.



Third, Wait for 10 hours the BFS begin to hatch you may wait for a night the BFS will hatch more.



Now you can see the BFS swim around in the glass tank. To feed your fry just simply using plastic cable which you use for air pump suck them directly to the fry tank. Very simple and easy right. During you suck the baby shrimp out please becarefull to do not suck the hatched eggs to the fry tank. Because it is not good for your fry if they eat that hatched eggs they may be die. After you suck all the baby shrimp you have to remove all the water out and refill the new water again the unhatch eggs will start to hatch. The second time for hatching normally will give you higher percentage of the baby shrimp. You can do hatching process 3-5 times up to the quantity of eggs you apply.



Fairy Shrimp Baby swim around and ready for feed to your fry.





Adult Fairy Shrimp which can feed to your adult betta. They can servive with in your betta tank for sevaral day so you can feed your betta with fairy shrimp if the betta already eat full the fairy shrimp still servive and wait for your betta hungry again. The water in the betta jar will be clean because the adult fairy shrimp will eat the dust in the water of your betta jar.

The Fairy Shrimp is also very nice animal. Many people keep them as tropical fish. I will update more information later soon about to culture the fairy shrimp until they growing to adult size.

If you interesting to try please don't wait kindly email me at suporn@bluebetta.com This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it



Now ready for sale. ....... limited quantity.

Cheers!

Suporn



Notice : 1.) Don't use air pump during hatch.

2.) The first time hatch may give you very little baby shrimp don't worry it is because the egg keep quite long so they need the second, ...third.... hatch process.

3.) If you stay in Cold area you should give them heater to control the water temperature to 25-35 degree C. and give them light during hatch if you stay in dark room.

We tried some. The main ste back with them is that they are VERY expensive. For a small baggie, it is $9, $13 with shipping and handling. And the larger 25 gram cup that they show is $29 not including shipping.

But they are as easy as it says. We put a tablespoon full in a half filled 2 gallon tank that we filled with the aged and heated water that we use for the fish, and voila the next morning we had SHRIMP! And we just left them in there to see how long they would survive in a completely bare tank. They went 6 days with a 90% survival rate, and after that there was a sevire die off.

The fairy shrimp when hatched are a little smaller than BBS, but bigger than VE. They are active, and swim around at all levels of the tank.

RC and I haven't thought about growing them out to adulthood, since we feed frozen food and at this point neither of us have the time to grow out any live food. I'd like to see some one who has, and to see how long it took them to grow them out. I would also like to see other people supply this, because right now he's the only one selling them to my knowlege. If more people start selling them, the price should go down and then RC and I would think on feeding them as a standard fry food. But right now we have it just for when we leave town for a few days.

One thing I would really like about them is if you overfeed, you don't end up with a ton of dead shrimp that will foul the water, they will live in the fresh water giving the fry time to eat your mistake. :LOL:
I always have a hard time for the first few days getting the correct amount of food for the size of the spawn. I almost always overfeed so that I'm sure everyone has enough to eat. ;)

The fact that they are a tad smaller than brine shrimp is a good thing because sometimes brine shrimp are too big for new fry. It might be that you could feed these for the first week or so until the fry are larger and able to tackle brine shimp.

I'm gonna check with Suporn and see if he has any experience in raising the fairy shrimp to adulthood. If I find out anything new, I'll post it. :D

WOW! I won't mind to try that. Those shrimps are beautiful. Get one extra bottle for me if you get them together. :D I pay you back. SOund fun to try something new! :lolo:
Justhal, you might want a bottle too. It sound good stuff. :D

I really want to try them, but it is definitely the price that is stopping me.

Who's gonna be the guinea pig that tries it out first? :rolleyes:

I'm interested too but the price and the questionable quantity is keeping me away as well.

Jamie bought some and is trying it.

That price is pretty hefty. :OMG: I have a LOT of fry right now - I don't think I want to spend that feeding all of them!

But I can see where it could be useful if you were going on vacation or couldn't get to your fry for whatever reason...

Here is the pricing for the fairy shrimp eggs. Maybe if several people are interested, we could combine orders and buy the larger quanity and save us all a few $$$$.

PM me if you're interested!!
I will try to get clarification on the actual weight of eggs in the 25g pack and the "Premium Grade" packs since the 25g pack is mixed with "green soil" and the "Premium pack" is four times larger than it. (????)

From Suporn's e-mail to me..........

5g pack……………………………9 USD

25g pack…………………………29 USD ( Eggs mixup with green soil)

Premium Grade pack……..…..59 USD (Pure Egg 4 times capacity of the 25g pack) NEW !

Shipping cost by EMS is 25 USD can ship 1-10 bottles. It is 4-5 day delivery. If you want to save shipping cost I also can ship via registered air letter but the eggs have to pack in plastic bag instead of bottle and it will take 2 weeks delivery.

Here is Suporn's reply to me about the quanity of the fairy shrimp eggs in each pack.

"5g and 25g pack is the weight of egg and soil mix. The actual amount I really don’t know but for the 25g pack is about million plus.

Premium Grade pack is pure eggs no soil. The total weight is about 20g only but the eggs amount is about 4x of 25g pack. I strongly recommend premium grade pack because it is a lot and enough for breeding so many spawn. I’m sure it is enough for a year."

My order is double as for splitting 4 members you wrote me in pm. Bettas4me. You got paypal right? :D

Can you ask suporn how to raise them. What they eat. I love to raise them big because they are really beautiful. :D

Hey - raise them up to adults and maybe YOU can eat them TOO, Yeevia!!!

:OO :OO :OO

:chair :chair :chair :LOL:

OK everyone, Yeevia and I have decided to be the guinea pigs. I ordered us some eggs and they should be here in two weeks. (I chose the "slow boat ....." shipping since it was much cheaper) I'n sure that you'll hear the results from at least one of us if not both. :LOL:

I think Yeevia is going to raise his to adulthood and make pets out of them and teach them to jump through hoops!! :OO :OO

Yeevia, this is how to grow then into adults.

How to make green water? :rolleyes:
Oh, by the way, we are not guinea pig. We are genius pigs. :OO :OO :OO
WOW! Nine days can feed to adult! That is good!!! :lolo:

oops!! I mis-spelled it!! :OO I meant to say genius. :OO

To make green water take a container and fill 2/3 up with aged water. Fill it the rest of the way with water siphoned from the bottom of your fish tank. The poop and food waste will provide an excellent food source for the algae. Place the container near a strong source of light. Direct sunlight might heat the water too much and kill the algae so might not be a good idea. You could use strong flouresent lighting too. After the algae starts growing, siphon off about a third of the water and repace with the "gunky" aquarium water twice a week. This will keep the culture well fed and also by siphoning off a third of the water each time, will keep the algae "thinned" out and allow room for the culture to keep growing and not become stagnant.

I wonder if you could use spirulina powder??? It's basically dried, powdered algae.

Might work...

Dunno .....?
You would think that when it got re-hydrated it would be just as good. I dunno how picky then little critter are. :LOL:
It sure would save a lot of aggravation of having to keep up another culture if it worked. :knowwhat

I just saw this auction on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...02151&rd=1&rd=1

Seems like a reasonable price to try them out with. ;)

My fry all are eating atison betta starter but if I was feeding BBS i would Tottaly get these instead, and this buyer has great feedback to, i hope some of yall start using these so we can hear how it goes. :T

those are totally cool.Beats doing the drawn out procedure of hatching bbs

I think I'd really like to give these a try.

Where do you get them?