Bamboo Shrimp Help

[stevem24s]

I purchased a bamboo shrimp. When I first put him in the tank he would hang out near the current and used his legs to gather food. The shrimp seemed to be very active. The shrimp is no longer as active as it was. I come home to find it in diffrent areas of the tank but I no longer see the shrimp using its legs to eat anything. Im curious if this is because there is no food for the shrimp? I was beginning to have an algae issue so I purchased two chinese algae eaters, they cleaned all the algae very fast, are they depriving the shrimp of food? I bought some algae wafers to start feeding the chinese eaters but the german rams and gold barbs seemed to enjoy the wafers more. How can I feed the shrimp or how do I know its eating?

Thanks for any help you can give

 

[bae1994]

if your in tropical then i hear that shrimp like moss balls and i know plecs like lettuce and cucumber and i think this goes for most algea eaters so he might like it. just a thought

 

[Tacklebury]

if your in tropical then i hear that shrimp like moss balls and i know plecs like lettuce and cucumber and i think this goes for most algea eaters so he might like it. just a thought

A ‘filter’ shrimp filters the water and as such can't eat big solid lumps like lettuce and cucumber! He uses his arms, which have fans on and filters the microscopic bacteria in the water current. These are only present in very mature tanks.

Sounds like there is a lack of food, it’s always a give away if it’s walking around trying to eat stuff off the floor.

Not sure what to suggest, I target fed my shrimp with some soaked crushed up flake food using a pipette and lots of patients!!! Sadly it’s died since when he got stuck during malting.

 

[~T~]

Cant really help, I've had 3 now and after initally doing well they just seem to fade away and the tank is heavily planted and very mature.

 

[three-fingers]

Not sure what to suggest, I target fed my shrimp with some soaked crushed up flake food using a pipette and lots of patients!!! Sadly it’s died since when he got stuck during malting.

That's what I do. These guys really need to be specifically fed. They can live for quite a while without decent amounts of food, but eventually they do seem to fade away.

When I kept one in my main tank, I don't think it was getting enough food, and it died after a month I think, either because of that, or because of moulting complications or it may have been attacked.

About a year ago if memory serves me correctly I got 3 of them for my fry tank, one died soon after purchase due to a bad moult (I'm thinking may this may happen because they haven't been fed properly by the importer/LFS for weeks), but my other two are still with me and doing brilliant! I feed them crushed flake (vegetable and normal) and on occasion frozen BBS. The male has more than doubled in size and the female has gotten eggs in the past (though the baby zoes were eaten/sucked into the filter before I saw them). Now I've turned the tank into a shrimp tank and pretty much tailored it for their needs with hopes of breeding them.

So yeah, IME these shrimp need fed properly.

 

[jack-100]

ive had mine in my tank for well over 6 months now.

personally i think the key is heavy water flow - in nature they dont do alot of moving but will stick in a place with high water currents and filter any waterborne food. I have an xp3 and have aimed the outlet towards a nice big rock which he sits on most of the time and filters. Occasionally when im feeding i will break up some of the flake food and make sure it gets in the filter flow so he gets fed, other than that he seems to be going well just as normal.
The tanks been set up for about 8 months now too so pretty well established

 

[madjoker14]

I had one of those bad boys when I first got 10g tank, I had him for about 10months and he was huge!! My wife killd it in a water change, poor thing was crushd with a gravel cleaner (I didn't talk to her for a day lol)