It’s hard to say why many people still don’t use feeding dishes. Maybe it’s because they don’t know about the benefits of feeding dishes, or they just throw food into the aquarium for the creature to eat freely. Or is it because these feeding dishes look unsightly in the aquarium?
This article will try to give you a list of all the advantages and disadvantages of using feeding dishes. After reading, you may think about whether you should use a feeding dish? In my personal opinion, feeding dishes are very useful in shrimp breeding. Yes, everyone should use them.
Let’s start by talking over about advantages first.
1. Food Control and Saving Money
Shrimp is definitely a very messy diner. Some aquarium owners even compare them to children who don’t eat the food you offer them. They only eat their favorite parts until they are full.
Feeding dishes can help prevent food spills around, which can actually make feeding very expensive. It keeps pellets, flakes, worms and etc. in the dish, instead of dropping into the substrate or somewhere else and then swept away during maintenance in the best-case scenario.
Using a feeding dish can help you determine the actual food intake by shrimp within a few hours. In this way, you can see if you feed shrimp too much food. If there are still some of the food left after four hours, you know that you are overfeeding them.
2. Easy to Clean Substrate and Reduces Contamination
Some people can say that shrimp is a scavenger, and it’s their job to clean everything in the aquarium. This is true, but only to some extent.
Without a feeding dish, food fragments are likely to enter the open space between your substrates. Keeping the substrate clean is important because the food (the part that stays in the soil) may spoil over time, which in the long run will negatively affect the water quality in the aquarium and shrimp breeding
This won’t happen if you use a feeding dish. Old food combined with shrimp waste will be in a feeding dish making it a lot easier to remove. Your aquarium will have a significantly less chance of planarian bloom and hydra contamination. Therefore, it increases the survival rate of your shrimp creatures. Of course, a few shrimp may take food away, but usually, food stays on the feeding dish. Also, a shrimp feeding dish requires very small maintenance. It is easy to wash and can be steam-sterilized if it is needed. For regular cleanings, you can simply use water and soap or just siphon it.
You can clearly see the food entering the substrate where the shrimp cannot reach. With a feeding dish, it spreads through the dish instead of entering the substrate. This means that your microflora will not be too overpopulated, because there will be a food shortage in the place of the substrate. Having a microflora is healthy, but having too much of it can look terrible.
You will also have more control over things like planarian flatworms as they mostly feed on whatever they can find in your substrate.
3. Less Shrimp Aggression
The more food is on the dish (instead of getting into the substrate) the more satisfied will be your adult and baby shrimp.
4. Count your Shrimp
Placing a feeding dish will attract most of your shrimp. So this will be the easiest way to know how many shrimp you have in the aquarium at this moment. It can be very useful once your colony starts increasing in numbers.
5. Looks cool
If you put it the right way, it can blend very nicely into the environment without any distraction. Some feeding dishes are even made in a decoration style.
6.The Price of Feeding DishesWell.
They are quite cheap. You can buy them for a couple of dollars and they will serve you forever. There is nothing to add here.
There are also some Cons.
1. One Spot is Bad
After cleaning, you should not put the dishes in the same spot. Otherwise, you run the risk of covering the surface underneath the feeding dish with cyanobacteria or Blackbeard algae (BBA) and some other dirty things. The easier way to avoid this kind of problem is to put the dish in another spot every time after cleaning it.
2. Algae in the Feeding Dish
Since your best freshwater aquarium light usually shines on the feeding dish at a direct angle, it will start to grow green algae a lot faster than anywhere else in your aquarium. As a result, the feeding dish will be covered with it quite quickly. You can’t stop it from happening, and the only way is to remove and clean it once a week or two weeks.
For the health of your shrimp, it is best that you always wash the dishes to prevent your shrimp from growing in an ammonia generating point environment, which will gradually kill them.
Tips:
You can bury the feeding dish so that its top is flush with the substrate. In this case, the shrimp can jump in instead of looking for another way around the glass.
In my personal opinion, glass feeding dished work the best, not ceramic or stone feeding dishes. When it gets dirty, you can more easily observe its dirty parts. You don’t have to worry that it will leach out anything dangerous and endanger the normal growth of your shrimp.
Some people have complained that their shrimp grabbed food fragments, most of which were scattered around the aquarium. The main reason is that the feeding dish is too small for your number of shrimps. If it is possible, get a bigger feeding dish than a smaller one. So that there will be more space to accommodate your shrimps during feeding. It will also help to avoid your shrimp becoming over-aggressive and having to fight in a small space to get a very fair share of the food.
It is best to place the feeding dish in the lowest flow area so that the food is not blown around and the shrimp can eat their food peacefully inside.
So, to sum up, should you use a feeding dish?
Yes, of course! At first, the shrimp will be cautious, but they will enter the feeding dish and get used to this way of eating after a few days.
You must remember to clean it properly. After cleaning from time to time, do not put it back in exactly the same place. It is a best aquascaping tools,and you can choose best fish tank ornaments. Your aquarium will be cleaner and you will create a safer growing environment for your shrimp.
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