Shrimp Fest!

[imsunflwr1]

hehehe! I do love the shrimp at Red Lobster... but these guys are safe

[Silverfang]

Do you have any floating plants? I know that's where the infusoria grows for me. You might try crushing up a little algae wafer and sprinkling it in a few times a day (very small amount).

[imsunflwr1]

Thanks Silverfang! I have dwarf water lettuce, frogbit, and duckweed... what is infusoria?

[Silverfang]

microorganisms. They are the right size for shrimplets

[dramaqueen]

Originally Posted by MattsBettas

I think about red lobster reading the title of this thread...

Haha, I thought the same thing.

[Oldfishlady]

In my (almost)dedicated shrimp tanks that are soil based heavy planted....I feed mine-half an algae wafer and some of my homemade food every other day and a large pinch of Ocean nutrition community formula flake food daily-this is for the shrimp, snails and the plants (flake food is a great plant food too) I also leave all the exoskeleton they shed so they can eat them and what they don't eat the snails will and/or breakdown for the plants.

I like to keep an (almost) shrimp only tanks (5-10gal) so that I can seed my other tank from it-That way I will always have a healthy colony of shrimp without worrying about them all being eaten or killed. However, sometimes I will use my shrimp only tanks on occasion to spawn and leave the fry in for a few weeks before I move the fry to grow out tanks. The breeders will eat some of the shrimplets, but never enough to make an impact on the colony-since the breeders may not be in that tank for longer than a few days anyway-Plus, I have lots of cover in the way of java moss.

I can't prove this, but in my tanks- it seems if the Bettas are raised with shrimp-they don't seem to harass the adult shrimp as much-they do eat any shrimplets small enough to fit in their mouths-but that is to be expected since they would be considered part of the Betta natural diet.

[imsunflwr1]

Thanks SilverFang!

Thanks for the feeding tips OFL... I ordered the Community Flakes... I don't think I've been feeding them enough. Some /algae wafer a few times a week, but most of the time they're on their own sifting through the sand and checking out the plants. Yikes!

[Silverfang]

For the adults, I give half a wafer 6 days a week. Occasionally a slice of blanched zucchini. I heard somewhere that you can tell the health of a colony based on how quickly they come for food.

Mine are very healthy.

[imsunflwr1]

hahaha! Mine too... they converge very quickly... so do the MTS! I just didn't think you were suppose to feed them that often so they would do their job in the NPT?