Problems Feeding My Shrimp!

[Mr Bee]

Hi, a longish post, but please bear with me.....

Tank is a 60L with 5 Neon & 6 Glowlight Tetras, and in the last couple of weeks have added 6 cherry shrimp. Wonderful little creatures, good to watch, but I also got them to partially help with the build up of algae on the tank decor/rocks etc.

In just a couple of weeks, they've already done a fantastic cleaning job, and I can already see a real difference to the amount of algae on my decor. But I imagine this food supply may run out eventually.....

So from advice from forums, and the shop I bought them from, I have a selection of frozen brine shrimp, hikari crab cuisine, and hikari algae wafers. The problem is, whenever I try and give them some of their specific shrimp food the tetras eat it all and there's none left for my shrimpies

I even hid some inside a shipwreck decoration, and the tetras went inside - note, they have NEVER gone inside this ship before - can fish 'smell' food in the water, cos they seemed to go straight to it?
Anyway, the tetras are proving a problem in trying to feed the shrimp the food I got for them; even distracting them with their own flake food didn't work - they just ate that and then ate the shrimp food too (brine shrimp, crab pellets, algae wafers; they eat all of them!).

Is my best bet to continue trying to hide it somewhere where the tetras cant get to (a small place under a rock maybe?), or as I am planning on shortly creating a mossy area (moss covered slates) with spiky moss, could I hide food in the moss, and would the fish not find it?

My main worry is that I know shrimps need a calcium source for good health and growth, which is what I got the brine shrimp, and crab cuisine pellets for, and if they're not getting them I'm concerned they will moult and not be able to replace a new shell.

I've read somewhere about providing egg shells for calcium - does this work, do they eat it, is it safe, and what are opinions on here about that???


Please help, I love my shrimp and want them to do well!!

 

[Liam]

You can feed them some green (organic to be on the safe side) vegetable like spinach or nettles, just dip it in boiling water and feed it to them, if they don’t go for the veg they are not hungry. You can also crush a crab pellet, soak the crushed pellet then put it in the water, every second or third day would be enough, polluting the water is a bigger issue than hungry shrimp. Six shrimp in 60 litres will probably find enough food anyway, they eat very little and find lots of food grazing, bio film that grows constantly is a big source of their food, some dead leaf like dried oak is a good addition. I wouldn’t worry about the calcium some of mine do fine in rainwater in a tub outside with no calcium. The moss would be good for them and when they start breeding some of the babies could survive in the moss. Yes fish can smell food.