will ghost shrimp clean up fish waste??

[jmaglich]

In a related post, I saw someone say that shrimp are good at cleaning up fish waste, and I was wondering if it'd be bad idea to drop like 20-30 ghost shrimnp in my 30 gallon, and let them scrounge around? Thanks!

 

[rkilling1]

No, I don't believe ghost shrimp eat fish poo. What nutritional value would that gain them? They are scavengers.

I have anywhere between 50 - 100 ghost, cherry, and wood shrimp and i have never seen them do it.

 

[JRagg]

They eat left over food, bits of algae, etc. Nothing eats poo.

 

[Fishyfanatic]

No, they do not eat fish waste. Some people believe that they do, but they don't.

 

[hc8719]

...agreed

 

[JDogg]

They eat left over food, bits of algae, etc. Nothing eats poo.

dung beetles eat poo 8)

 

[weaverkb]

Nope, they just lay their eggs in it.

 

[JDogg]

Nope, they just lay their eggs in it.

pretty sure they eat dung (at least the partially digested plant matter in herbivore dung)

Dung beetles refer to those beetles which feed partly or exclusively on feces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dung_beetle

anyways not really the point...ghost shrimp do not eat poo

 

[DepotFish]

My gravel vac eats poo. Seriously though, you won't find any fish or aquarium inverts who eat poop. They just eat sunken fish food and algae and the bacteria that grows on the tank bottom.

 

[Fishyfanatic]

A point that should be made is that if there was a fish/invert who ate poo, they would in turn make their own poo so it would defeat the purpose.

 

[bs6749]

But there would be LESS poo if they did that Fishyfanatic. No offense but you guys are all assuming that there is no nutritional value of poo... that is that the poo is 100% digested material and that is not the case. Elephants for example have poo that is only about 1/2 digested so certainly something could benefit from consuming this material. (Gross I know... sorry.) Yes fish are not elephants but I would wager that there is a good portion of their waste that is undigested. However, I would doubt that shrimp would eat the waste material. Just trying to say that it is possible for something to use it.

 

[krap101]

i think the ebay (soemthing like that) usually get mixed up with poop and detrius. detrius is uneaten food and poop. in the long run it lowers ammonia by a tad with scavengers because instead of the food decaying it is more processed. they could also mean it like that

 

[bs6749]

Detritus is dead and decaying matter.

 

[krap101]

i duno what i was thinking.. my bad

 

[clubsuperduty]

They do make excellent treats for oscar fish

 

[7Enigma]

A point that should be made is that if there was a fish/invert who ate poo, they would in turn make their own poo so it would defeat the purpose.

There is energy loss at every state of metabolism. The common example of how easy it is to feed the world on vegetables rather than meat is often used. Anything that eats and metabolizes a food source, regardless of the source of the food source, will remove some of that energy due to inefficiencies in metabolism and absorbed nutrients.

And there most definately IS a great deal of usable nutrients in ALL feces. We do not posess a digestive system that can remove all nutrients from food sources, and neither does any other organism.

 

[bs6749]

On average, 90% of the energy is lost from one trophic level to the next. This is not very effecient at all.

 

[fish_4_all]

Well when I could get mine to survive, my ghost shrimp ate the pleco poo all the time, especially after I fed them zucchini and it looked green. They loved it. My cories would also pick at it and get at the green stuff from the zucchini. So I guess it depends on what the fish eat and how much is passed by the fish.

 

[coldmachineUK]

You have daring shrimp/cories

I was under the impression that because fish poop is passed as waste it contains high (possibly toxic) levels of ammonia (hence why you need a cycling tank to break that down etc. etc. etc.). Why another organism would want to risk eating something toxic is beyond me!

 

[bs6749]

Maybe the organism has developed a resistance to ammonia and other toxicities so it does not matter to them. Not saying that the shrimp and cories have, I am just saying that an organism could exploit this niche if it had developed the resistance.