# Food advice for Red Cherries



## LancsRick (28 Oct 2012)

Evening all! 

I've got a 23l tank full of Red Cherry shrimp (plus some snails that I'm slowly eradicating), and they seem to be doing really well at the moment, zero deaths, plenty of moulting, generally happy shrimp!

One thing that I was hoping to improve on though is their colouring - they're generally fairly pale. No doubt this is partly due to the fact that I never bothered getting graded shrimp, and they may well just be mediocre examples. That said, I know diet can play a big role in how they colour up, so I thought I'd ask for some feeding advice.

At present they get algae wafers as their staple, supplemented by the odd bit of blanched cucumber or pea. I know there are various (really expensive!) shrimp foods around, but I've no idea what is good and what is hype.

Any advice appreciated!

Cheers.


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## basil (28 Oct 2012)

Foods high in carotenoids promote good pigmentation in shrimp. Try thinly sliced boiled carrot, or if you are happy to spend a few coins, a company called genchem make a product called astaxanthin which is high in carotenoids. Quite expensive but lasts for ages and is very good.

Another good way to improve colour of your cherries is too buy some high grade fire red cherries, and let them cross breed. A slower process, but they will improve your shrimp as they cross and breed offspring. 

I've also found that feeding blanched fresh nettle brings out strong colour in my shrimp, but I'm not sure that its a carotenoid thang with nettles!


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## billy boy (31 Oct 2012)

basil said:
			
		

> Foods high in carotenoids promote good pigmentation in shrimp. Try thinly sliced boiled carrot, or if you are happy to spend a few coins, a company called genchem make a product called astaxanthin which is high in carotenoids. Quite expensive but lasts for ages and is very good.



Sorry for jumping in on the thread, I was looking at getting some astaxanthin, But was trying to justify the £20! Is it really that good?


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## Gfish (31 Oct 2012)

Try ASTAX. Great fish and shrimp food and extremely good value.
http://www.ta-aquaculture.co.uk/


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## basil (31 Oct 2012)

billy boy said:
			
		

> basil said:
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> 
> 
> ...



Honestly I wouldn't bother using it on my own standard grade cherries, but I do use it on my painted red grades. It's £20 a pack, but dosage is so small (1/5th of a spoon every week!!) the pack lasts for aaaaaagggggeeees! And yes, in my experience it certainly makes em red!!


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## jack-rythm (1 Nov 2012)

Is mixing standards cherries with fire red cherries not bad for breeding purposes?

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## basil (1 Nov 2012)

jackrythm said:
			
		

> Is mixing standards cherries with fire red cherries not bad for breeding purposes?
> 
> Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2



Not at all. Fire Reds are simply high grade cherries. It's a good way to improve your own cherries by adding a few. Of course the flip side is that it will dilute the colour slightly of your fire reds.  It's something I've done in the past to good effect. I do also have another cherry tank with pure fire reds. Any culls that don't make the fire grade then get put into my cherry tank.


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## jack-rythm (1 Nov 2012)

Nice system..  

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## dw1305 (1 Nov 2012)

Hi all,
It is definitely the carotenoids (they make Carrots orange) like Gfish & Basil say, Astax crumb is great (I buy all my dry food from TA aquaculture). I'd also try feeding them some dead leaves (Oak, Apple, Beech, Magnolia are all good), and a high chlorophyll food like Basil's nettles (or spirulina flake) will also help. The dead leaves you just put in the tank and the shrimp "graze" on them.

The astaxanthin is actually harvested from the cysts of a green algae (_Haematococcus pluvialis_), which forms the red scum around bird baths <http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artjan99/haem.html>, and other water dishes that repeatedly fill and drain up with rain water. I'm going to try culturing it, but you could probably just mix the cysts in with wet flake etc.  

cheers Darrel


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## basil (1 Nov 2012)

dw1305 said:
			
		

> Hi all,
> It is definitely the carotenoids (they make Carrots orange) like Gfish & Basil say, Astax crumb is great (I buy all my dry food from TA aquaculture). I'd also try feeding them some dead leaves (Oak, Apple, Beech, Magnolia are all good), and a high chlorophyll food like Basil's nettles (or spirulina flake) will also help. The dead leaves you just put in the tank and the shrimp "graze" on them.
> 
> The astaxanthin is actually harvested from the cysts of a green algae (_Haematococcus pluvialis_), which forms the red scum around bird baths <http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artjan99/haem.html>, and other water dishes that repeatedly fill and drain up with rain water. I'm going to try culturing it, but you could probably just mix the cysts in with wet flake etc.
> ...



Thanks Darrel another well written and detailed explanation! I also thought your post on shrimp waste was very well simplified. We should have an ask Dr Darrel section  Keep em coming!


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## jack-rythm (1 Nov 2012)

I got one for you Darrel.. I heard because shrimp deal with their own bioload I can have as many as i want in one tank.. is this true?

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## dw1305 (2 Nov 2012)

Hi all,


> Dr Darrel section


 Never even made Ph.D., following telling my sponsor (I'll name the guilty men, Heinz) that Spent Mushroom Compost had no future as a peat alternative for growing nursery stock, they thanked me by removing all 57 varieties of my money. Shortly after that the UK mushroom growing industry and Bath University's Horticulture Department both went belly up, leaving me as a "Master of Philosophy". 


> I got one for you Darrel.. I heard because shrimp deal with their own bioload I can have as many as i want in one tank.. is this true?


 No, not really, but I can see where the idea comes from. Because shrimp are cold blooded (poikilothermic) and  detrivores (eat algae, decaying plant matter etc), they have the ability to survive on extremely small amounts of food. However they are still metabolising, so the input of carbon (as carbohydrates), nitrogen (protein) etc will need to exceed their basic minimum requirement. They are also continually respiring, so can potentially asphyxiate themselves if the gas exchange surface isn't large enough for CO2 and O2 to diffuse along their diffusion gradients with the air. They are also continually excreting NH3 via their gills, which will need to be diluted, or assimilated by plants or oxidised by bacteria (via "biological filtration"), so that it doesn't build up to toxic levels. The theoretical limit is the "carrying capacity".

Having said all that, my suspicion would be that in a system with a wide shallow tank, phyto-filtration and a "wet and dry" trickle filter, and a low protein and sugar diet (something like shredded dead leaves which would have a very large surface area of potential feeding surfaces), you could potentially build up and sustain a very large population of shrimps. If you upped the food intake you could probably have a situation where you could periodically harvest a large number of shrimps, although increasing inputs makes a failure of biological filtration more likely.

cheers Darrel


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## johnski (2 Nov 2012)

Apparently lowering the temp can help them colour up too. I keep mine at 23


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## jack-rythm (2 Nov 2012)

Wow thanks Darrel. And yes shrimp prefer lower temps. Mine are between 19-21 degrees  

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