Monday, June 11, 2012

The Joys of Keeping Ghost Shrimp as Pets

Maybe "joy" is too strong a word, but they are fun to keep, inexpensive, and easy to care for:


It’s a GHOST!
I love Ghost Shrimp! I have had an aquarium in my house for over 15 years, and I’ve always loved having a ghost shrimp in my tank. They are very neat and express cool movement, I personally think they are very entertaining to watch. Ghost Shrimp are also very inexpensive to purchase, at my local fish store you can get 3 for a dollar. Woohoo!

The Ghost Shrimp is also known as the Glass Shrimp because of its semi-translucent body. It is pretty awesome to look at their bodies and see the food that they have eaten! They like to feel secure so sometimes they will borrow in your substrate. You can provide sand or fine gravel to help them with this. Sometimes they will hide out in your plants as well.

Ghost Shrimp are scavengers which means they will pretty much eat anything. They do a great job at cleaning up your aquarium floor of uneaten flake foods. They also love algae wafers, nature algae, and pellets. Since they are so small, do not mix with large fish because they will get eaten! [...]

Follow the link, for a list of their care requirements.

I always wanted to try keeping them when I was a kid, but didn't. Better late than never! They are great scavengers, fun to watch, and a nice contrast to the aquarium fish.




Also see:

Life in the Bowl: The Ghost Shrimp

     

2 comments:

The Heterodox Homosexual said...

I like keeping ghost shrimp, too. One of my aquariums has only small, peaceful fish, so they do well there. A local aquarium store sells them as feeders at 6 for $1.

Chas said...

I keep two in a tank full of Gold Barbs and Rosey Barbs. I thought the Barbs might bother them, but there are no problems at all.

I keep two others in a tank with a Siamese Fighting fish. They get along just fine. It's been a pleasant surprise, I would have done it sooner if I'd known it would work out so well.