having trouble hatching brine shrimp eggs

[mikedmatthews]

May I know what salt do you use?..reef salt?or plain cooking salt ?or marine salt?

pickling salt.

[helenf]

I have a new comment to make on my old attempts to hatch brine shrimp for my fishes:

I tried everything suggested on this thread and anything that seemed to make sense that I saw elsewhere.  I tried an expensive plastic hatchery and a coke bottle.  I tried different kinds of salt, different amounts of salt, different temperatures, everything.

Never got more than a few of the things hatched. 

But it was pointed out to me recently, on another forum, that apparently brine shrimp have a really low tolerance for copper.  Like all inverts.  Apparently they will almost never hatch if there is any copper in the water at all.  And I have copper in my tap water, which I didn't know about until months after giving up on growing brine shrimp.   No wonder I couldn't get them to hatch! 

So I'll be getting back to you when I have a bit more time to try my hand at hatching BBS again.  With copper-free water, this time.

My message to anyone who is having trouble with hatching brine shrimp:  if it just doesn't seem as easy as everyone makes it out to be, try measuring the amount of copper in your tap water.   

[mikedmatthews]

yes, copper bad.  distilled water would do the trick.

a side note - i'm now using water softener salt.  $3 for a huge bag.  works great.