Adding Ghost Shrimp Into Betta Tank And What/how To Feed Them?

I posted about a week ago that I took my ghost shrimp out of my 5 gallon because I suspected that my female betta was killing/attacking them, so I put them in an unheated, unfiltered 2.5 gallon tank with some marimos. (I did water changes every other day)

Now I want to try to keep them with my male bettas.
I have a 10 gallon that is divided and it is housing 2 male bettas.
One betta has lived with 5 ghost shrimp before and he was fine with them. The other one, I never tried keeping tank mates with him because I just recently got him, so I don't know if he is aggressive or not. I'm going to float the ghost shrimp in there to find out he responds.

But here is my question: how can I feed the ghost shrimp without the bettas eating their food?
The way I did it in the past was, I would feed them a trial pack of flaked food I got from an aquarium kit and I would use a chopstick to sink them. The ghost shrimps would get to it, but my betta would also find it so he would eat most of it and scare the shrimp away.

Is there a better way to feed the shrimp? When I do it my way, I would end up overfeeding my betta and I don't want my betta to be eating flaked food. It was also difficult to hand-feed/chopstick-feed the shrimp to make sure that they have food in their system.
Is there an alternate food that I can use for the shrimp that my bettas won't eat?

 

Hello!

Ironically/luckily, my friend had the same issue! She ended up getting a decoration with holes/spaces to small for her Betta to poke his head through! I think she actually uses shrimp food tablets or soemthing similar (algae wafers maybe? I really don't remember) that sinks. She uses her forceps to put them in the deco, and the shrimp go in there and eat when they need to, and it allows them to hide when the Betta gets a little nippy. She takes out the food when she needs to so it doesn't rot.

Hope this helps and best of luck!

 

You don't need to feed shrimp anything. One of the benefits of ghost shrimp is they are scavengers eating anything they can find. They eat food that falls to the bottom or gets missed by fish, detritus, algae, even fish poop. Now if it were 20 shrimp in one smaller container, sure you may need to supplement with food, as there wouldn't be enough around to scavenge for all of them. But with 1 ghost shrimp, you will never need to feed him, and he will never go hungry.

 

You don't need to feed shrimp anything. One of the benefits of ghost shrimp is they are scavengers eating anything they can find. They eat food that falls to the bottom or gets missed by fish, detritus, algae, even fish poop. Now if it were 20 shrimp in one smaller container, sure you may need to supplement with food, as there wouldn't be enough around to scavenge for all of them. But with 1 ghost shrimp, you will never need to feed him, and he will never go hungry.

Yes, but this depend on the food that the OP has. Is they are feeding pellets, which is given once or twice a day in a small amount anyhow, there is little to no chance that the shrimp are getting fed properly. Scattered food it less of a problem

 

You don't need to feed shrimp anything. One of the benefits of ghost shrimp is they are scavengers eating anything they can find. They eat food that falls to the bottom or gets missed by fish, detritus, algae, even fish poop. Now if it were 20 shrimp in one smaller container, sure you may need to supplement with food, as there wouldn't be enough around to scavenge for all of them. But with 1 ghost shrimp, you will never need to feed him, and he will never go hungry.

I feed my bettas pellets and they never miss them, I have no algae in my tank, and I actually have 4 ghost shrimp. So there isn't really any extra food they can scavenge for, so that's why I need to feed them separately.
Before I added them, I just fed them a mashed up blanched pea to see if they would eat it, and they did, so that's an option for me.
I put all of them on the side with the betta I got recently.
He's too busy swimming up and down the glass to bother with them. He noticed them and checked them out for a few seconds and then he went back to doing his own thing.
I think I'll keep them in there for now and see how they do.
I am thinking of buying algae wafers to see how they like them. Hopefully this betta won't steal their food >_>

 

They will eat algae wafers happily, but I still don't think it is "needed". Remember shrimp eat very little, a good rule of thumb is about the size of their eyeball, once a day. Meaning that tiny speck is good for a day's worth of food. So you will need to use small crumbs broken off from the wafer.

If you are really concerned with it, they make shrimp feeding tube/dish things sold on ebay. It's basically a long tube with a dish at the base, you put in a corner of your tank and slide the food pellets into the tube. They float down to that dish, and try to keep things from being scattered and getting messy.

With all that said, don't worry over shrimp food too much unless you start collecting rare/expensive breeds in shrimp only tanks.

For example, I have a 40 gallon tank with 20 fish, 4-5 ghost shrimp, and probably 100-200 red cherry shrimp. I NEVER feed the shrimp, EVER. Granted I have a planted tank, with more "dirty" stuff for them to scavenge through, but still the fact remains, shrimp find stuff to eat. I have done tons of research on aquatic shrimp over the years, read lots of forums, etc. I have never heard of anyone attributing any health issues to lack of food or eating.

 

They will eat algae wafers happily, but I still don't think it is "needed". Remember shrimp eat very little, a good rule of thumb is about the size of their eyeball, once a day. Meaning that tiny speck is good for a day's worth of food. So you will need to use small crumbs broken off from the wafer.

If you are really concerned with it, they make shrimp feeding tube/dish things sold on ebay. It's basically a long tube with a dish at the base, you put in a corner of your tank and slide the food pellets into the tube. They float down to that dish, and try to keep things from being scattered and getting messy.

With all that said, don't worry over shrimp food too much unless you start collecting rare/expensive breeds in shrimp only tanks.

For example, I have a 40 gallon tank with 20 fish, 4-5 ghost shrimp, and probably 100-200 red cherry shrimp. I NEVER feed the shrimp, EVER. Granted I have a planted tank, with more "dirty" stuff for them to scavenge through, but still the fact remains, shrimp find stuff to eat. I have done tons of research on aquatic shrimp over the years, read lots of forums, etc. I have never heard of anyone attributing any health issues to lack of food or eating.

Okay thank you for letting me know. And yeah ghost shrimp are not that expensive since people actually use them to feed their fish or for cleaning for the most part, so I'm not too worried about them.
Even if my betta eats them or if they die somehow, it won't be a big deal to me, but at the same time I didn't want to starve them.
As far as plants go, there's one good sized anubias nana, tiny water wisteria and a marimo.
I also just fed them a ton before adding them in there to basically buy some time for me to figure out how to feed them haha.
I'll see how they do for the next few days