Hello fams, once again thank you for reading my blogs. Your stay here definitely keeps me motivated in writing more articles and sharing my knowledge on shrimp keeping. We have many project on hand, but with limited manpower, we are trying our best to get everything going.

Today I would like to share with you some tips about feeding your shrimp. What are some things that you want to look out for when feeding your shrimps. Feeding is a simple thing, but yet complex as these shrimps are so sensitive to everything.

Pallet Food

Pallet food is the most common food in the shrimp market. There are tons of brands out there that you can chose from but to me, it boils down to two important facts about feeding pallet food. The first important fact is how long the food can stay intact during feeding.

One problem about food that crumbles easily is that it pollutes the water quickly and also it buries into your soil. The major problem about this is the food that stays inside your soil, it builds up to ammonia and when your shrimps dig out that tiny grain of substrate that is covering it, it turns into an invisible landmine and poison your shrimp immediately.

To overcome this problem, I would recommend to vacuum your soil occasionally during water change.

The second thing that I want to look out for is the content of the food. Shrimps literally eats everything, but there are some ingredients that speeds up growth and also promotes breeding. Food with high meat contents promote growth, but be careful not to overfeed with these as meat base tends to rot quickly in our tanks.

Food with vitamin contents also helps with immunity and this is very important. Vitamins don’t come as concentrated in our dried food, that’s where your shrimps don’t get vitamins as often and tends to be weak. Vitamins can help with shrimp growth and also promotes breeding.

Snowflakes A.K.A Barley straw/Soy Bean
These are great food for your shrimps when you are on a holiday. You can throw in as many as you like and shrimps enjoy them. Snowflakes don’t pollute your water in a short span of time. They break down very slowly and thus, doesn’t rot in your tank. They can last for a couple of months in your tank and still be safe from ammonia spikes.

The only downside of this food is that it is definitely not as nutritious as pallet food. Pallet food are packed with stuff that are carefully selected by the manufacturers to give more nutrients to the shrimp. Snowflakes are just natural ingredients that has some or minimal nutrients in them. It would be good to feed these occasionally, as shrimplets and adult shrimps like to graze on them like snacks!

Dried Leaves
In my opinion, I hate feeding these leaves to my shrimps. Dried leaves do not have as much nutrients as everything else above. They look boring and sometimes carries certain disease that are bad for shrimps. Many times, a lot of brands claim that the leaves are clean, but how can we be so sure about that? I rather not take the risk and go with manufactured food or blanched vegetables.

Vegetables
Vegetables are great snacks for your shrimps if you like to take the trouble boiling the vegetable. Vegetables contain good and useful nutrients that the shrimp loves. Boiling the vegetable helps in two things. Firstly, it softens the vegetable making it easier for the shrimps to chow down on them. Secondly it kills off all the harmful stuff in it. I feed them occasionally with vegetables only because I am too lazy to boil them. Try to use organic vegetables as they are pesticide free. Pesticides are a big NO for our shrimps. You can try different vegetables like spinach, carrot, pumpkins or even cucumbers.

How often should we feed our shrimps?
There is no right or wrong answer to this. As long as your shrimps are eating, you can continue to feed them. But my daily routine are as follows: I feed them twice every day, once in the morning and once after dinner. I remove any unwanted food if any, after 1 hour of feeding. I vacuum my soil at different areas of my tank every water change to remove leftover food underneath the soil.

Powder or Pallet?
Powder food are great stuff for shrimplets, they float around the water and that allows your baby shrimp to grab on the food without any trouble. The only downside is that it clogs up your filter very quickly, thus polluting the water. So I only feed powder food sparingly when I have shrimplets in my tanks.

Pallets are good because they don’t pollute the water quickly, they ball up your shrimp together making it very enjoyable for your viewing pleasures. The downside is that shrimplets have a difficult time hustling for food with the adult shrimps, they might get hurt or not get enough food during the process. So again, if you have lots of shrimplets in your tank, consider feeding powder feed.

Food is important to our shrimp. But what is more important is to have a clean environment for these shrimps. If you overfeed, just remember to clear the left over by vacuuming or doing water change.

If you like to write to me, you can drop me an email at hello@madshrimp.com

If you like any of these shrimps, you can grab them from our HQ or from Aquatic Avenue at Redhill! Aquatic Avenue specialise in planted tanks and also have a wide variety of shrimps to compliment the aquascape. Drop by and have a friendly chat with them if you like to build a tank at home.