A product review and comparison. Brine Shrimp Hatchery Dish vs Ziss Brine Shrimp Hatchery
Let’s start with the Hobby BS Hatchery Dish. The dish has several pluses which I feel put it ahead of the Ziss BSH. First of all it requires no electrical plugs, no light, no air pump, and a heater only if your room is cool or you need hatching to go faster. Without the heat, running the dish at below 75 the hatch rate slows down to over 24hrs. I put a heating pad under mine and run the temp at about 78deg. This places my hatch rate to about one day. It will last for a few days after hatch if you turn off the heat. Another thing which messes with my hatch rate, although not much, is I use seawater. The higher salinity by a few ppm does slow the hatch rate down some. This seems especially so with the larger Ziss hatchery. The ideal salinity for a brine shrimp hatchery is 1.020 specific gravity.
The Ziss BS Hatchery needs an air pump and a focused light source at the bottom when collecting, so this is two electrical outlets. The air pump also adds to the noise in the fish room or wherever you have it set up. I have mine in the bathroom and it is not the air pump but the bubbles which make the noise. The big plus for this hatchery is volume. It is much bigger than the Dish system and thus produces more artemia. If you have lots of tanks to feed, then this is the hatchery for you. If not, then I would go with the smaller dish system. The other consideration is the amount of salt the hatchery needs. For the Ziss system it is at least twice as much if not 3 times as much. It gets expensive hatching all those baby brine shrimp! The Ziss system does come with a thermometer and a hole at top for a heater, so another outlet is needed unless your room is warm. The Ziss BS Hatchery is for serious breeders only in my opinion. The casual hobbyist with a few tanks to feed need not make the investment into such a big system. The Dish system really is perfect for the hobbyist. I feed two tanks with it, and this works out about right.
All in all, there is a Brine Shrimp Hatchery for everyone and the only other option to consider in my view is a DIY hatchery and frankly the cost savings are not worth the trouble. DIY will cost about half the price of the Dish system and the Ziss system twice more than the Dish. I suppose it depends on your needs. For me, the Brine Shrimp Hatchery Dish is perfect. If you need daily baby brine shrimp/artemia I recommend getting a second dish. For those who want to grow full grown brine shrimp, this is a whole new ball game! Not hard, just requires a tank of its own, phytoplankton, and about two weeks. A light will help keep the phyto going. Now days you can buy the phytoplankton but frankly by the time you have the brine shrimp all grown out, it would be cheaper to just buy some frozen. Again, it is a need vs reward calculation. For the enthusiastic hobbyist I recommend giving the full-grown brine shrimp a go. It can be fun to raise your own fish food and experience the breath of the food chain. Raising fish fry becomes so much more productive with baby brine shrimp. The difference surprised me despite the all the “professionals” touting the benefits of having live food. For most of us, it just does not make sense. Anyway, I share this bit of research and experimentation so you can make more informed decisions concerning your hobby. Research live foods for yourself and see if it doesn’t improve the quality and health of your fish.
Sequoia Elisabeth
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