Feeding living natural foods to Cherry Shrimp

Ecir · Post by **Ecir** » Sun May 14, 2006 5:21 am

Heh, my shrimp turned their noses up at the dandilions, back to the ol' drawing board

Newjohn · Post by **Newjohn** » Sun May 14, 2006 6:02 am

Some Shrimp, I have found out, are picky eaters.

Out of the 10 tanks I have for Shrimp.

9 will eat canned Spinach.

8 will eat Dandilion Greens.

6 will eat canned String Beans.

As for Collard or Turnip Greens , The only canned ones I can find are seasoned. So I have not tried any of these.

If you look in the produce section of you local grocery store they , atleast the ones in this area, they have fresh " assorted Greens ".

They do not say which type they are. I will be testing these this week, and I will post my findings.

John

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Sun May 14, 2006 10:53 am

Heh, my shrimp turned their noses up at the dandilions

They must be cooked for 5 minutes to be soft before the shrimp will eat it. Was your's cooked?

Ecir · Post by **Ecir** » Sun May 14, 2006 5:34 pm

badflash wrote:
Heh, my shrimp turned their noses up at the dandilions
They must be cooked for 5 minutes to be soft before the shrimp will eat it. Was your's cooked?

Yup, I cooked them to death, should have been a melt in their mouth feast. Mmmmm.... Dandylions.

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Sun May 14, 2006 6:09 pm

You should leave a small amount in there for a few days. I'll be they will start to work on it. If you cooked it for more than 5 minutes, you may have cooked all the good stuff out.

I just bring the water to a boild and cook for 5 minutes, or zap it in the microwave for about the same amount of time with a little water.

Post by **Mustafa** » Sun May 14, 2006 6:45 pm

Ecir wrote:Heh, my shrimp turned their noses up at the dandilions, back to the ol' drawing board

My experience is that shrimp don't accept "green" food (spinach, dandelions, kale etc.) if there is a lot of algae in the aquarium already. In other words, they already get their fill of vegetables through the algae.

Another reason why they might not be accepting the greens is usually because the water quality is not to their liking. They will still accept commercial foods, as those have attractants, but won't touch greens. Try to do more frequent and larger water changes and see what happens.

Finally, if you had been feeding them a lot of other food already, then they are not going to go for the greens. If you perform a large water change and don't feed any other food for a day or two, then they will go for it if there is nothing else to eat in the tank.

Having said that, they don't *have* to have greens in their diet, so don't worry if they don't eat it. Fish food has all the nutrition they need.

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Sun May 14, 2006 9:13 pm

What I find really strange is that my amanos love the dandilions so much. They go for it over the fish food, collards, anything. They play tug-of-war as they try to carry off pieces to eat all for themselves. I've not seen this behavior with any other food.

fishgeek · Post by **fishgeek** » Sun May 14, 2006 10:33 pm

do you find feeding greens intensify's the colour in your shrimp?
sorry slightly off topic just was wondering what affect the carotenoids might have on cherry colour

andrew

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Sun May 14, 2006 10:53 pm

The cherries seem to get more red, but it may be more of a mood thing than from the food. When they relax they get really red, when stressed they get pale. I've been amazed latelywatching my reddest female change from total explosive red, to a mottled red in the span of 2 weeks. I think the stess is being a mother, or getting ready to be one. After they drop the babies they seem to really get red.

AnneRiceBowl · Post by **AnneRiceBowl** » Tue May 16, 2006 11:12 pm

I have about 22 red cherries in a ten gallon along with some snails that I keep for food for my dwarf puffer fish. I came across a snail food recipe that my cherries and ghost shrimp LOVE!

The recipe includes baby food (or mashed and cooked adult food--canned), unflavored gelatin, calcium powder (like JurrasiCal, from the LPS), and fish food (any kind you have laying around). It takes about 5 minutes to open everything and then mix it up and form it, and then 10 to 15 minutes in the fridge to set. The unused portions can be frozen into cubes.

I like to add extra calcium to the recipe.

Tiapan83 · Post by **Tiapan83** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 12:50 am

wow thats a cool idea for shrimp rearing, gonna have to try it for my new shrimp breeding tank.

Shrimplet · Post by **Shrimplet** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 6:50 am

I have snail tank, well it was, got tired of trying to keep it clean so gave them to someone else to deal with. I had shrimp in with them and I took all of the shrimp I could find and put them in the bigger tank preparing to tear down the 10g. Low and behold, the 10g is full of baby shrimp. What do I feed them? No fish in the tank, a few very baby snails and a lot of green algae on the glass. Is this enough?

Thanks

Neonshrimp · Post by **Neonshrimp** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 3:16 pm

The algae should do as the main source of food. Suppliment their diets with greens as stated above and/or commericial foods. Be sure to feed sparingly, as not to polute the water. You can do a search on "feeding" or "food" on the site.

Shrimplet · Post by **Shrimplet** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 4:35 pm

Neonshrimp wrote: You can do a search on "feeding" or "food" on the site.

I did, that is how I got this topic. Most that came up didn't even look like they had anything to do with feeding or food.

Thanks for the info

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 6:27 pm

I use algae based flake food. I crumble it up very fine and put in just a pinch when they need it. If there isplenty of green algae, they probably don't need much. If it is BGA they need to be fed about everyother day.