Freshwater Filter Feeder Food

[George Monnat Jr]

I have three large Vampire/Giant African Fan Shrimp in my 125g. I was excited to find these and Singapore Flower Shrimp, because one of my favorite critters in the SW tank was Porcelain Crabs. Filter feeders look cool, are cool to watch, and they never mess with anything.

However, I'm worried about starving them. I already starved a mussel to death, as aquariums in general are just too clean. I thought about grabbing some FW clams next time I'm diving in Travis, but I don't want them to die or release parasitic larvae (glochidia).

I started a green-water tank to cultivate Daphnia moira, the smallest water flea, hoping that the shrimp will eat them. Has anyone tried that?

I found an article that mentioned using quick-cycling liquid bacteria, like Seachem Stability or BioZyme, to feed filtering critters. I guess you could add so much bacteria that they end up consuming all of the food causing a massive bacteria die-off and tank crash, but I think the chance of that is remote. Especially if the liquid bacteria stuff doesn't really work like a lot of people claim. Has anyone tried that?

I just don't want to add marine filter food to prevent any chance of increasing my water hardness. And it's expensive.

Any other ideas or success/horror stories?

[victoly]

I wonder if you could just crush up old pellet or flake food into kind of a slurry and blow that at them?

[George Monnat Jr]

I've been putting a pinch of flakes in my sump return so the return pump chops up and blows it into the DT. I don't know how much wear and tear that puts on the pump, and the fish still eat a lot of it. I think the Moina may work (not moira that I first posted). They're 400 µm - 1 mm, I think, compared to 2-5 mm for Daphnia magna. If not, the fish may eat it. I just hope they're not too big for the filter-feeding shrimp while being too small for the fish.

[bige]

I've never fed those shrimp and they did fine. But I did feed my tank well. I guess they just eat that. I had one live for four years. I have not gotten those fw clams to live more than 6 months though.

[George Monnat Jr]

If the D. moina don't work and I need a supplemental food, I found this one that should be perfect.

[giveme_bryopsis]

Hi, old topic, but just wanted to add my experience here.

I have them in a species tank, with some freshwater ghost shrimp and a few, always hidden Thai micro crabs. Tank setup is a bit a stream tank (water uptake on one end via foam covered intakes, water outflow on the other end via powerhead).

I finely grind up quality flake food (marine flakes, meat/veggie flakes, powdered spirulina, freeze dried worms/daphnia/brineshrimps) in a coffee grinder. That's the daily food, but they also get frozen baby brine shrimp, cyclops.

the trick is to not filer the water that much. I do have well-cycled water with added bacteria (sea chem stability usually) and my external filter (front-ended by foam over the pump intake) only runs about 8 hours during the day. It has a pump in the tank to push the water to the external filter, so I can put it on a timer.

I will not mislead you: the water is not crystal clear and there is a bit of (healthy) bacterial detritus on the tank bottom. The shrmps will filter feed and pat down the marimo balls and sand for extra biofilm. (This is different from the filter shrimp behaviour of poking the substrate to stir up food when they are hungry/not finding food in tanks that are too clean).

Filter shrimps seem to do well with plants as the extra nutrients give the plants something, too. I have sueswassertang, many marimo balls, and some floating plants.

fun critters, but they do require consideration