breed your own feeder shrimp

[burnah]

hey there.

industrial fish food is expensive and not very sustainable. i have not yet considered making my own food until i stumbled upon freshwater shrimps as pets. there are species that thrive in tap water, reproduce regularly and eat detritus, algae, dead leaves,vegetables and bacterial matter.
some of them require brackish water for reproduction, so they can even tolerate salt, but those are not as easy to raise as the neocaridinia family.

neocaridinia heteropoda can be bred in very small tanks with little to no equipment, maybe even on the windowsill and they are readily available, at least in my area, from hobbyist breeders. they grow up to an inch, release ready developed fry - that can live on their own - in the size of a few milimeters.

could this be a step to make our reefs more independent from fishprotein harvested from the ocean? has anyone done this? i am currently planning a setup for breeding those and will share my experience here..

greetings martin

 

[maxst2]

Possible to breed Brine and Mysis shrimp?

 

[jrp1588]

Are we talking cherry shrimp? Not a bad idea actually, assuming they are good and nutritious.

 

[doctorgori]

Freshwater feeders? I'm not sure and this is sorta more a question than a statement but, I thought I read in a few places that there was some sort of nutritional issue feeding SW fish FW live feeders like guppies ...
...and again, thats more question than statement

 

[burnah]

yeah cherry shrimps - neocaridina heteropoda. they grow way bigger than mysis and brine and i think are of a better food value at least than brine shrimp. the good thing is they feed on waste or easy to obtain vegetables/algae.

wether freshwater shrimps are of a value to saltwaterfish - thats what i want to know too!

 

[chilwil84]

for fish like frog fish that can be hard to get to eat anything but live this is far better than feeding goldfish. the question comes down to nutrition are they better than krill (not a good long term food) that are in no major decline. the energy required to maintain the tank may produce far less food than mass collected krill or silversides.

 

[doctorgori]

^ I think the gist of the project is sutainability ... but regardless, if you were to stroll over to Aquabid and look at the current auctions for cherry shrimp, you wouldn't be using them as feeders he he

once upon a time I had zillions

 

[burnah]

here i get 1 for an euro, and i bet with 10 of them you can start a nice colony. energy required for their tank would be a 5watt filter and sunlight on the windowsill, waterchanges can be done for watering the flowers. they eat leaves and detritius, and all my frozen mysis will never have a footprint that lean, taking in transport, freezing energy etc.

my original question was wether they are good food for marine fish?

 

[Mike_Noren]

FWIW a shop here in Stockholm fed & bred seahorses with surplus cherry- and crystal red/black shrimp. So they can't be too nutritionally unbalanced. Besides, if you're worried about that, just feed the shrimp heavily with high quality food right before feeding them to the fish (known as "gut loading" among herpetologists, and "nutritional enrichment" in aquaculture).

 

[burnah]

thanks!

 

[Jeremy Blaze]

CHerry shrimp are expensive in these parts as well.

 

[jrp1588]

Yes, but they breed pretty rapidly under the right conditions. Though, I'm not sure if they could breed fast enough to keep up with a regular feeding regimen.

 

[billsreef]

Gut loading them with a marine based food might work well. The big trick between marine and fresh water food sources is the fatty acids. Quite different profiles between the two.

 

[GreshamH]

Gut loading them with a marine based food might work well. The big trick between marine and fresh water food sources is the fatty acids. Quite different profiles between the two.

Just because you give them a marine source does not equate to them being able to utilize it, right?

 

[billsreef]

Just because you give them a marine source does not equate to them being able to utilize it, right?

In terms of what the FW feeders will incorporate into their own bodies, correct. For the gut loading with marine foods to have any practical reality, it would need to be done just before the feeders are used themselves as food. Basically this way the feeders are simply used to get the marine food (in their guts) into the fish you are feeding them too. For fish that will accept the usual dead frozen food fare, there is obviusly no practicality in going to the trouble of raising of FW feeders and gut loading them. In the case of certain finicky feeders that might only accept live foods, than it might be worth the effort.

BTW, threads like this make me realize just how spoiled I am living on the coast. I can catch my own SW feeders anytime I like

 

[burnah]

yeah id love to search the tidepools all day long now i can just use muckpools in the european winterstreets.

 

[reefergeorge]

If you can breed me some mysis my wallet would love you. I just spent $125 on mysis for my cuttlefish that will be gone in a week.

 

[syrinx]

I would say breed them and trade them back into the pet store for regular food seems the best idea. Use excess as treats for your fish.

 

[burnah]

120 could sure be reduced with such feeders. Could take some time though

 

[larrypoe]

You can get them in my area for $10 a dozen.....for grown shrimp w several being gravid females...which is about right to start a colony in a 10g aquarium