Last Updated on June 19, 2022.
A common question that people ask in the shrimp keeping hobby is whether or not their shrimp eat poop. Especially when you’re new to keeping shrimp, it’s easy to make assumptions based on their behaviour in your tank. As natural scavengers, they could be looking for and consuming waste in the tank, as they often can be seen picking up bits of all-sorts off of the ground.
The truth is that shrimp poop has no nutritional value, and so they do not eat their own waste or any other fish poop in your tank. They might pick up poop while sifting around the tank, but they will soon figure out it’s no good for them, drop it and move on. This means that waste is still being produced and will build up in your tank, as they aren’t actively recycling their own output.
What do shrimp eat instead?
If you’re spotting shrimp eating and it isn’t any food that you’ve given them, what are they eating instead?
The most likely answer is any algae that have built up over time from the natural cycle of your tank happening. If you see a lot of algae, it’s a good sign as it means the nitrite cycle in your tank must be steady enough for plants and healthy bacteria to grow. Shrimp of all kinds love climbing around your ornaments and the glass, picking at algae for food.
If you have natural ornaments in your tank, such as driftwood or Indian almond leaves, shrimp also love picking at these too. Especially with the almond leaves, shrimp love to eat through these leaves entirely as it provides a lot of healthy nutrients that they would normally find in their natural environment in the wild.
Do I need to clean my shrimp tank?
As your shrimp aren’t eating their own poop and recycling their waste in your tank, you will need to semi-actively do water changes and clean the substrate of your tank. While they do a lot of work on algae and natural scavenging for nutrients, they aren’t picking up what they leave behind themselves, so eventually it’s going to be your job to clean up what you are able to every now and then. This can be done with gravel cleaners for thicker substrates, but this can be harder for tanks with thinner sand substrates.
If you’ve got a smaller shrimp tank, which is often the case in the shrimp keeping hobby, it’s going to be difficult to use a standard gravel cleaner, so a good alternative is to use a turkey baster, to pull waste out of the thin substrate in finer detail.
Do shrimp eat poop? Conclusion
To sum up the article, shrimp do not eat poop or waste from any creatures in your tank. They will scavenge for algae around the tank, but it’s also wise to supplement that with high-quality shrimp food and natural leaves that give off nutrients that shrimp need to stay strong and healthy for moulting. Because of this, you’ll also need to make sure you’re staying on top of water changes and waste cleaning, in order to prevent ammonia and nitrites from building up in your tank and causing the early deaths of your shrimp.