The beauty of live plants in with shrimp especially mosses and other fine thick growing plants is that not only do the shrimp find food such as micro-organisms to eat they really do enjoy clambering about the plants. The plants also make the shrimp feel safer, particularly when they have moulted and new shell is soft and they are especially vunrable to attack.
Shrimp are grazers and opertunists when it comes to food, they will have a go at practically anything they get offered. My shrimp get a range of foods, from tropical fish flakes, to catfish and vegetable wafers, specially formulated shrimp/ crustacean foods as well as defrosted bloodworms. The also like leaves off plants with many people giving them mulberry leaves and kale. Almost all vegetables and fruit will be picked over by shrimp too so things like carrot, pumpkin, zucchini and even banana will all be eaten gladly by them.
The words of warning I will give about giving shrimp fresh leaves and fruit and vegetables is make sure if purchasing the vegetable/ fruit from a shop that it has been organically grown and if collected from your local environment make sure no pesticides or herbicides have got onto the plants.
With live plants ( or anything a the shrimp can hide in/ on cling too) in the tank always be careful when removing any excess plants. Many a shrimp has hitch hiked to the floor or other tanks because they would not let go of what ever they when on. I give plants a good swish in the shrimps tank before removing plants then I dump the removed plant into another container of water, that I can check for shrimp again later in. Many times when doing tank maintenance in my tanks I have moved something or other and then discovered a shrimp on the floor where it has fallen.
Once your tank is ready for the shrimp, I am sure you will thoroughly enjoy them. And a good general rule of thumb, after your initial purchase and the shrimp have had time to breed, you give a head count of shrimp and double it for the actual number of shrimp in the tank. This guide will almost always give you a good idea of if the numbers are getting to high in the tank without having to strip the tank down and physically count/ remove every single shrimp.
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