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Trying something different


ineke

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So today I’ve been making my own shrimp food. I already make powdered food for my babies which seems to have worked well over these years of breeding. Today I dehydrated some leaves - mulberry, thistles and celery- all these years of keeping shrimp and I didn’t know they like celery leaves I tried some blanched celery leaves and all 3 tanks went straight to it.  I’ve used a bit of whatever shrimp foods I have , plus the ground leaves and powdered baby food, mixed it with agar agar and have the resultant mix in the dehydrator now. I’m fed up with buying over priced shrimp food that rarely gets eaten so hopefully they will like my little experiment, if not I will have a lot of dry shrimp food sitting around.
My shrimp seem to prefer freshly cut mulberry leaves that I “cook” until soft in the microwave over everything else. I’ve tried all sorts of food , different leaves as in spinach, nettles, nasturtium and veggies like cucumbers and zucchini. They like cucumbers but throw in a mulberry leaf and that’s them happy. I’ve bought many different types of shrimp food- benibachi, azoo, denerle etc but they generally don’t bother with it. 
I probably feed way too much so they are fussy with what they eat but I’m getting much better with the amounts so they might eventually get hungry.

I also tried making some shrimp lollipops but on small branches from my mulberry trees because I didn’t have any bamboo skewers. It seems to be working but I had to put the food on thicker than I would like otherwise it wouldn’t stick to the little branch. I won’t know until tomorrow if it works but worth trying. Will let you know how t all goes tomorrow.

I have  spent quite some time looking for an article that a group of us here had put together around 2013 about all the different leaves we feed but I gave up as I kept getting sidetracked reading old posts . I found one that was pinned in food and nutrition about different dry foods people had tried but still can’t find the one about leaves. If anyone can find it can you let me know please. I think it was quite informative and interesting but then we didn’t have all the information that is available now back then.  Well that’s enough rambling from me today ?

Edited by ineke
Forgot to. Mention lollipops
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I have also looked for the thread/arrticle on leaves but can't see a single one only lots of different ones about different types! I will look again a bit later.

I used to use blanched fresh (organic) spinach and the shrimps loved those. Otherwise I use(d) dried leaves (brown) from the grounds here, usually oak or mulberry, which I get someone to collect when they fall in autumn and I get enough to last the year! I buy Indian Almond leaves!

I think that when I had my tank, it was so stocked with shrimp that they would eat anything foodwise so commercial products worked well enough!

Simon

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Thanks Simon. I was looking for the article to bring it up for the current members to discuss. I’m pretty well informed about leaves and probably tried quite a lot of them. I grow mulberry trees in pots and have fresh leaves all year so don’t bother drying them. I’ve given my shrimp mulberry leaves that were dried , frozen and lightly blanched the outcome is the softer the leaves the quicker they eat them. I actually cook them in water in the microwave for 8 minutes which is a lot longer than most people tell you to do. I’ve found this the most accepted form of leaves and that was trying different times in my 13 tanks back when I had my shrimp room.
Now I just pick fresh leaves every few days and cook for the 8 minutes within a couple of days all I have left are the veins. I use the freshly picked leaves and have never had an issue with the sap- probably because I cook them so long. 
My shrimp aren’t particularly interested in other leaves- spinach, lettuce, oak , kale - although today I tried celery leaves and they actually jumped on them pretty quickly even though they had mulberry leaves in the tank.

I will try to find the article again but if you are looking you need to go back to 2013 or 2014 that’s when we were very active and did lots of trials of food. I thought if I could find the article it might be good to help start a discussion .?

 

 

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