New to shrimps

[Souls_keeper]

How often should I feed my shrimp?? Sometimes I’d drop blanched spinach or other veggies and they go untouched and start growing fuzz around them so I pull them out.

I am just tying blanched apple and see how it goes but will pull it out in a couple of hours if no luck.

I already have cuddle fish bone in there, a small piece of driftwood and a ton of plants but want tk be sure I give them all the nutrients they need.

It’s a small 3.5g, heavily planted. We’ve lost 3 adults and we’ve had about 3 sets of babies, out of which less than half survived. We have a heater coming because we just learned that there MAY be temp changes somehow and this may help?

[Autumnsky]

How long has the tank been running?

Are you familiar with the nitrification cycle? If not and also just a great source of information is the Aquarium Advice article - Getting Started linked in my signature.

As for shrimp, they do best in a mature tank. That would be a tank with a thriving beneficial bacteria / BB colony in the filtration media. Stable without fluctuations in ammonia and nitrite spiking, and good maintenance which will help to prevent nitrAtes from getting too high.

A tank which has months of existence because it allows the growth of BB, biofilm and aufwuchs which are little things which colonize and grow in an established aquarium, of which these things are used as foods for shrimps which you might see, pick and clean the aquarium surfaces constantly.

Those foods are important for the health of the shrimp and for teeny tiny babies to forage for the things they need to grow.

You should know what water parameters are needed for the shrimp type which you have. pH, temperature, TDS, kH/GH. No ammonia, no nitrites and kind of lower nitrates.

A planted tank is very useful, or at least one which contains live plants, like aquatic moss, subwassertang, and other lower light tolerating plants, if you are not running a tank set up specifically to focus on keeping a planted tank.

What kind of shrimp do you have right now? There are 2 most commonly kept groups of dwarf shrimp colonies / breeding groups - Neocaridina (like Red or pinkish red Cherry Shrimp) and Caridina (CRS / Crystal Red Shrimp are an example).

How many are there?
and what other companion stock are in the tank?

If you have other fish in the tank they could be considered predators. Shrimp are a normal food source for fish, even small fish.

What food are you feeding them other than spinach or veggies?

Over feeding is a concern in a 3.7G tank.

Do you have a filter? Does it have a sponge covering the water intake?

Shrimp crawl right up into intakes, to feed on all the goody slime that grows in there... and can get sucked up and killed by the impeller in the filter.

There are many companies which produce quality shrimp food.

A nice combo pack comes from Dennerle Shrimp King Food 5 in 1. It seems to offer a great pre packaged assortment of many (5) types of foods for a reasonable price.

They little guys eat a small amount of actual food, so a whole jar of one kind could last you a year of so. My favorite shrimp food company right now is GlasGarten, and Shrimp Fit + is a good overall food. I use at least 4 of their foods, and have tried most of them.

Mosura, Benbachi, and others provide a quality supply of foods for shrimp.

Think of their eye as the amount of food they might eat each day. VERY small amount. And they wouldn't need to eat that every day if you offer an organic blanched spinach leaf or similar (like you do, removed after several hours so it doesn't rot).

They can go for a few days. I personally would do more water changes, and feed every other day. The tiny amounts. The cuttlebone is great too.

[Souls_keeper]

Originally Posted by Autumnsky

How long has the tank been running?

Are you familiar with the nitrification cycle? If not and also just a great source of information is the Aquarium Advice article - Getting Started linked in my signature.

As for shrimp, they do best in a mature tank. That would be a tank with a thriving beneficial bacteria / BB colony in the filtration media. Stable without fluctuations in ammonia and nitrite spiking, and good maintenance which will help to prevent nitrAtes from getting too high.

A tank which has months of existence because it allows the growth of BB, biofilm and aufwuchs which are little things which colonize and grow in an established aquarium, of which these things are used as foods for shrimps which you might see, pick and clean the aquarium surfaces constantly.

Those foods are important for the health of the shrimp and for teeny tiny babies to forage for the things they need to grow.

You should know what water parameters are needed for the shrimp type which you have. pH, temperature, TDS, kH/GH. No ammonia, no nitrites and kind of lower nitrates.

A planted tank is very useful, or at least one which contains live plants, like aquatic moss, subwassertang, and other lower light tolerating plants, if you are not running a tank set up specifically to focus on keeping a planted tank.

What kind of shrimp do you have right now? There are 2 most commonly kept groups of dwarf shrimp colonies / breeding groups - Neocaridina (like Red or pinkish red Cherry Shrimp) and Caridina (CRS / Crystal Red Shrimp are an example).

How many are there?
and what other companion stock are in the tank?

If you have other fish in the tank they could be considered predators. Shrimp are a normal food source for fish, even small fish.

What food are you feeding them other than spinach or veggies?

Over feeding is a concern in a 3.7G tank.

Do you have a filter? Does it have a sponge covering the water intake?

Shrimp crawl right up into intakes, to feed on all the goody slime that grows in there... and can get sucked up and killed by the impeller in the filter.

There are many companies which produce quality shrimp food.

A nice combo pack comes from Dennerle Shrimp King Food 5 in 1. It seems to offer a great pre packaged assortment of many (5) types of foods for a reasonable price.

They little guys eat a small amount of actual food, so a whole jar of one kind could last you a year of so. My favorite shrimp food company right now is GlasGarten, and Shrimp Fit + is a good overall food. I use at least 4 of their foods, and have tried most of them.

Mosura, Benbachi, and others provide a quality supply of foods for shrimp.

Think of their eye as the amount of food they might eat each day. VERY small amount. And they wouldn't need to eat that every day if you offer an organic blanched spinach leaf or similar (like you do, removed after several hours so it doesn't rot).

They can go for a few days. I personally would do more water changes, and feed every other day. The tiny amounts. The cuttlebone is great too.

THANKS!

The tank itself has been established for over a year, we used to have a betta in there which we moved to a 10g and decided to used this tank for shrimps. It’s cycled and well established. Parameters are constant at:
pH: 7.4-7.5 ammonia/nitrites:0 nitrates: 10-20ppm

We just added a heater since temperature has been fluctuating at home, and we keep the heater at 76F.

We’ve had the 5 Neocardina for about 4ish months (there were 8 but we’ve lost 3 adults) and now there’s about 9 juveniles out of all the babies we’ve had.

There is a filter, the intake is covered with a pantyhose. There’s almost no current and no other habitants other than the shrimp and some snails that just won’t die lol. We do weekly water changes, and other than the blanched veggies I drop some leftovers mysis shrimps or pellets from my frogs. They are not fans of algae waffles. I only clean the algae from the glass in the front but leave it on the sides and the back.

I didn’t know they could over feed, I wanted to make sure they’re getting good and nutritious food. Should I feed every other day then?

Based on this new info, any other tips for them to be happy and flourish?

Thanks again!

[Autumnsky]

You can still feed the fresh type food every day but remove it and the other kind / store foods every other day. If you have a snail doing clean up then it wouldn't be too much of a worry since the snail.would be eating up the left overs. But snails poo quite a.lot and you'd also need to be cleaning up after their poo.

[Souls_keeper]

Originally Posted by Autumnsky

You can still feed the fresh type food every day but remove it and the other kind / store foods every other day. If you have a snail doing clean up then it wouldn't be too much of a worry since the snail.would be eating up the left overs. But snails poo quite a.lot and you'd also need to be cleaning up after their poo.

Yeah, they’re ramshorns, I try to squish them and get rid of their eggs each chance I get but they just don’t go away. They are pretty tiny though but still annoying.

Thank you so much for your help!