Design and development of a flowing bed reactor for brine shrimp culture

An automatic self-cleansing high density brine shrimp reactor has been designed and tested, and the concept appears successful. Initial experiments suggest that extra-ordinarily high densities of brine shrimp may be maintained in such a system. The concept of a flowing film of glass beads appears to be a very useful technique in scouring waste material from animal culture tanks. The concept is particularly useful for culture of small marine herbivores in continuous culture. The bead flow rapidly removes waste material while allowing for water passage, yet completely containing the animals.Further design improvement and development should result in a high density brine shrimp culture system which is both simple and inexpensive to build, as well as reliable and cost effective to operate, and capable of efficient algal cell removal from culture water.