Artemia Cultivation Units

Breed and hatch your own brine shrimp quickly and easily to populate your aquarium with an endless food source. The Aqua Breed 200 is a cultivation unit that enables the simple and easy hatching of artemia cysts. The unit is installed in the aquarium with 400,000 cysts per hatch. Includes the cultivation unit, tubing, and eggs.

The Aqua Breed 1000 can be installed in or out of the aquarium with a capacity of 2,000,000 cysts per hatch. Cysts should hatch within twenty-four to thirty-six hours and are full grown within two weeks. Both units include mounting hardware and airline tubing, and require a small air pump (sold separately).

Downloadable Aqua Medic Aqua Breed 1000 Manual PDF.
(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 or later - get it here for free)

Shop all Aquarium Brine Shrimp Hatcheries and Accessories.

Please click on "More Information" for the benefits of live foods.

There are a variety of quality prepared foods currently available that satisfy the nutritional needs of both fish and invertebrates. However, supplementing the diet with live food can provide additional nutritional and behavioral benefits.

Improve water quality
The availability of food is uncertain in the wild but in most aquariums, overfeeding is the norm. Consequently, poor water conditions can result due to decaying, uneaten food. In general, live food is less likely to be consumed in one feeding, allowing a longer time frame for foraging without seriously compromising water quality.

Recreate natural feeding behavior and environment
Due to this extended foraging period presented by live foods, many fish and invertebrates will become more engaged in the feeding process, spending the day actively pursuing the food. By sparking the natural feeding behavior, the addition of live food can stimulate natural instincts and introduce a dimension of interest and involvement for your fish not possible with prepared foods alone.

Better nutrition
Live food can also be used as a method of delivering additional nutrients through a process called "gut-loading" or indirect enrichment. Nutritional benefits are transferred from one feeding level to the next via the food chain. Live food can be enriched with vitamin supplements, providing a means of delivering additional nutrients to fish that refuse prepared foods.