How to feed your freshwater shrimp

Life with Pets goes over how they feed their freshwater shrimp.

There are many different types of food on the market when it comes to feeding shrimp. What we will be going over is what Life with Pets feeds their shrimp, so it is the foods that they have seen the most success. 

Two different types of food will be discussed, food that is fed to the shrimp and natural food that shrimp can pick at.

Repashy Superfoods - Soilent Green. The Repashy gel foods are one of Life with Pets go-to foods that are used frequently. Soilent Green is the most commonly used one. You can easily make small or large batches of it, the shrimp, snails and even the fish seem to all enjoy it. How so many species enjoy it it is an excellent all-around food to feed your aquarium. How it is a gel style food, you can also add other food sources to it if you want to bulk it up some or add some variety. We also commonly feed Hikari Algae Wafers or the Omega One Veggie Rounds. Lately, we have been feeding the Veggie Rounds more how the nutritional value and ingredients seem to be better than the Hikari. We also feed the Hikari Shrimp Cuisine and green beans as well.

Within your aquarium, you can also add items your shrimp can pick at and eat slowly as well. Some of the things that we keep in our aquariums are Cholla Wood, the cholla wood gets a biofilm on it, and then the shrimp will eat that biofilm. There are also areas in the back of the tank and the dividers that does not get cleaned and algae build up on in our tank. This alga is a natural food source for them to eat. Shimp will naturally molt as they grow and we leave the molts in the tank how the shrimp also will eat them, so while you may be tempted to take them out try not to how the shrimp will eat it. Having plants in your tank is also ideal how the shrimp will pick off any algae that grow on them as well as any mico organisms that grow with in the plants.

So how often should you feed your shrimp? Honestly, every thanks will be different as far as how often the shrimp should be feed. Everything in the tank can affect how often you feed, for instance, a tank with driftwood, cholla wood, catappa leaves or lots of plants could all affect how often the shrimp need to be feed. At Life with Pets, they typically feed their shrimp only tanks at least every other day, in some cases, they feed some shrimp only tanks every three days, and in other cases, they feed some shrimp only tanks ever day. A good test to see how often you should feed your tank is when you place the food in the tank do the shrimp rush to it? If they do not and the food sits there for some time without any of them going after it, it is a good sign that you did not need to feed them yet.

Most of the shrimp tanks that have snails in with them get feed every day so that the snails have a food source. The food is left in for some time, but we make sure that it does not stay in the tank for too long or overnight so that it does not degrade the water quality.