How to Test a New Shrimp Food When Your Cherry Shrimp Ignore It

Give the familiar food and the new one a turn in the same spot, on separate feeding days. That’s a fairer comparison than putting both in at once. You’ll be able to see whether the shrimp pick at the new food and whether it’s easy to lift out once it softens.

This is a small comparison you can do across a few of your normal feeds. All you need is a familiar food, the new one, and a spot where you can see what happens without lifting half the tank apart. The useful result is a food you know how to use and clean up, whether it ends up being a regular feed or an occasional change.

Start with the shrimp you can already see

Spend a minute watching the tank before you open either packet. Look at the moss, the underside of a leaf and the edges of the filter sponge. A shrimp can spend ages making tiny picking motions in one spot. If several are moving between their usual grazing places, you have a useful picture of how the colony looks before feeding.

If the whole colony seems unusually still or you’ve seen losses, put the food trial aside. Check the equipment and read the water parameters guide for what to test and what the results mean. The broader guide to why cherry shrimp stop coming to food is a better first stop when familiar feeds are being ignored too.

Give yourself one ordinary feed to compare with

At the next usual feeding time, offer a small amount of something they’ve eaten before. Put it in the place you plan to use for the trial. A shallow dish or flat stone works well when you can see the front edge and retrieve the food easily. If they normally eat under cover, choose a spot beside that cover.

Take a quick look after the food goes in, then come back when you usually check for leftovers. What did the shrimp actually do? A shrimp picking at a wafer with its front legs for a minute is a better clue than a headcount around the dish. Note how much of the piece remains and whether any crumbs have washed out of view. A quick phone photo can save you trying to remember how big that bit was.

Try the new food on the next normal feeding day

Use the same spot and roughly the same time of day. Follow the packet directions and start with a small portion that suits your colony. If the foods are shaped differently, you don’t need to make the pieces look the same size. A little dry pellet can spread far wider than a piece of wafer once it has softened.

For example, Niblets mini wafers give you a visible piece to put on the slate. A food that breaks up is easier to judge if you can see where the particles go. If you’re changing the food and moving from a wafer to a powder at the same time, write that down. The experiment tells you how that particular feed worked in your tank.

Try to keep the usual lights, filter flow and feeding interval. An unusually long wait since the last feed or a big tank clean earlier that day can make the comparison harder to read. There’s no need to engineer a perfect evening. Just make a note if something was different.

See what happens after the first visitor

The first shrimp at the dish may pick briefly and wander off. Keep watching for a moment. Did it return? Are other shrimp approaching along the same route? Is there a clear patch where they’ve been picking? You can also see whether snails arrive first or a larger shrimp carries the piece away.

If the food seems to vanish, check the ground just downstream. Soft pieces can slip between gravel or disappear behind wood. Equally, a piece that still looks fairly intact may have been grazed around the edges. Compare your two photos if it’s hard to tell. Remove what you can see at your normal cleanup check, following the food’s directions, and make a note if retrieving it was awkward.

Change one thing if it’s worth another try

Say the shrimp picked at the familiar food in the open and never touched the new one. You could give the new food one more go beside the moss where they spend most of their time. Use the same small amount and see whether the location makes a difference. If they come out and graze there, you have a practical place to offer it.

If the first attempt left loose food in a spot you couldn’t reach, try a smaller piece in the dish, provided the food can be used that way. If the familiar feed got the same lukewarm reception, go back to observing the tank. Adding more options to the same feed makes leftovers harder to interpret, especially when the colony has plenty to graze on already.

Decide whether it earns a place in the cupboard

A short note is plenty. Write the name, where you put it, what you saw and what was left. After two or three normal opportunities, you might find the shrimp graze on the new food quietly and leave very little. You might find they only visit it under cover. Or you might be left taking out the same untouched portion each time.

If you have several tanks, label the notes with the tank as well as the food. The same wafer can disappear quickly in one colony and sit untouched in another. Use each tank’s own familiar feed as its comparison.

If the new food gets a little steady grazing and leaves you an easy cleanup, it’s earned a spot in the cupboard. If you keep lifting it out untouched, go back to the familiar feed. If you’re comparing foods in two aquariums, keep the results separate. The colony that spends all evening on the front glass may find a new piece much sooner than the one that stays in the plants.