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I recently made a video that answered the question, what do red cherry shrimp eat
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After releasing that video, which I've linked to in the description, several people contacted me to ask how often they should feed the red cherry shrimp
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In this video, I'm going to answer that question. Hello friends, welcome back to the channel
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If you're new here, my name is Richard and I'm the author of the new e-book on neocardina shrimp
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When it comes to feeding red cherry shrimp, we know they're scavengers that will eat pretty much anything they come across in the aquarium
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Whether it's leftover fish food, the starts of algae or even fish poop, red cherry shrimp will happily eat it
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However, for red cherry shrimp to thrive and reproduce rapidly, they need to be target fed
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Target feeding simply means adding food that is intended for the red cherry shrimp to consume
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I favour rapashi gel food or algae wafers But essentially any fish food that sinks will work well for a cherry shrimp
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So the question here is how often should we feed our shrimp
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Personally, I like to feed my Red Cherry shrimp every other day or every third day
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This rule is especially true when I keep my shrimp in fishless systems
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I have some nano tanks that house only shrimp and there are no fish at all living in my
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shrimp breeding tanks. In all of these aquariums I only ever feed every other day if it's a large colony of
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shrimp or every third day if it's a small colony. If we overfeed our red cherry shrimp
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there is a danger they put on too much weight. Whilst a fat red cherry shrimp may seem like a strange concept
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overeating can affect a red cherry shrimp's ability to reproduce, but more importantly
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it can affect their ability to molt Molting is the process whereby a red cherry shrimp pulls itself out of its current exoskeleton in order to be able to grow Red cherry shrimp that are overweight often
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struggle to pull themselves free of their old exoskeleton leading to them eventually dying
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An important concept to grasp here is that red cherry shrimp are not like mammals. They do not
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need to be fed several times a day or even every day. Red cherry shrimp will spend much of their
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time dining on the microscopic life that lives in the aquarium. Red cherry shrimp consume food
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at such a tiny level they will even eat biofilm, which covers pretty much every surface in the
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material aquarium, and bacteria such as the bacteria that colonise catapa leaves
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Of course, if you're keeping your red cherry shrimp in an aquarium that also houses fish
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you may even need to feed your shrimp less often, as red cherry shrimp will also consume the uneaten
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fish food that makes it past the fish. Remember, red cherry shrimp are tiny. Each individual
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shrimp does not need to eat very much food at all, and adding too much food can pollute
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your water and wreak havoc with the nitrate levels in your aquarium. This is especially
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true in nano tanks, where the water volume is often 10 gallons or less
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So to answer the question, how often should I feed my red cherry shrimp, the answer is
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every other day or every third day, depending on the size of your colony
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Another question I am frequently asked is do red cherished shrimp eat fish poop? And
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I answer that question in the video linked on screen
