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.
Freshwater Filter Feeder Food
in Freshwater Discussion
Posted
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