Brine shrimp are usually harvested as feed for aquarium fish. On the internet and in stores, aquarium-
suppliers sell dry brine shrimp eggs. In the dry state the eggs can survive for years. They only hatch when
the right conditions exist, courtesy of Mother Nature or, as in this case, human beings. The eggs are so
tiny that a single bottle holds something like 700,000 eggs, Robert says. He says that they also come in
envelopes that hold a lot more (see “How to Hatch Brine Shrimp Eggs”).
Robert’s SoJin practice is to buy the eggs, hatch them, and then release the babies into the San
Francisco Bay, which has a lower salt content than the salt ponds of their native habitat. They are able to
live in a wide range of salt concentrations.
How to Hatch Brine Shrimp Eggs
Materials:
2- or 5-gallon bucket with lid
Aquarium air pump
Light (for heat)
Thermometer (to check the water temperature)
Sea salt or aquarium rock salt
It takes about 36 hours for all the eggs to hatch. What you do is put them into fresh water in the bucket to
soak for 1 hour, then add the salt dissolved in a little more water and maintain the water at 80 degrees.
The light keeps the temperature constant. Amazingly enough, you only need about 2 gallons of water to
hatch about 2 million eggs.
After a few days, if you turn the light off in a dark room and shine a flashlight into the water, you will see
zillions of tiny beings in constant motion.
After hatching, a baby brine shrimp feeds for 4 days from its individual egg. After that the babies need to
be released into the bay so that they can forage on their own. Robert releases them at various points
during the 4-day period because the temperature of the water does not have to be precise once the
shrimp have hatched.
Robert says that with only a few 5-gallon buckets, a sangha could release as many as 100,000,000
shrimp. (Yes, a hundred million.) The average lifespan of a brine shrimp is about 6 months, which,
although not as long as some species, is much longer than in an aquarium. And of course they have the
opportunity to reproduce, giving life themselves.
Chagdud Rinpoche’s sangha does a big release of brine shrimp into the Great Salt Lake each year,
Robert says. There are no predators in the waters of the Great Salt Lake. He suggested that perhaps we
could do a release at drupchen time into the Salt Lake too.
A page from Fish Tanks Direct for brine shrimp eggs, both a bottle and a neat kit that includes the right
amount of salt:
for brine shrimp supply click here
Or, for egg from the Great Salt Lake:
http://www.fish.com/item/ocean-star-international-
brine-shrimp-eggs21-oz/710495/