Baby shrimp instead of baby brine?

[CalmedByFish]

I can't be messing with hatching brine shrimp, but I'm wondering if a few breeding cherry shrimp would supply my fish with an ongoing source of live food. I realize they'd be too big for fry, but could adult endlers eat baby cherry shrimp?

[CT_]

I think you'd need to keep a serious colony to do that.   A clutch of eggs carries 20-50 and takes a month to hatch.

 

If they're just treats or something then I'd just keep a dozen adults in there and let nature take it's course.

[CalmedByFish]

1 hour ago, CT_ said:

If they're just treats or something then I'd just keep a dozen adults in there and let nature take it's course.

The only cherries I've found online are pretty expensive - particularly shipping. I think what I was finding totaled near $60 to order 6 shrimp. Do you know a cheap way to get healthy ones? 

Any idea if the babies are small enough for an endler's mouth? Endlers are so little. 

[CT_]

11 minutes ago, CalmedByFish said:

The only cherries I've found online are pretty expensive - particularly shipping. I think what I was finding totaled near $60 to order 6 shrimp. Do you know a cheap way to get healthy ones? 

Any idea if the babies are small enough for an endler's mouth? Endlers are so little. 

If there's a local fish club or FB group you can ask for peoples "cull" shrimp (ie the ones that aren't good enough colored to keep in the breeding colony).  Around here they sell for 1-2$ ea.

I'm not sure if they're too big or not but baby shrimp are really small ~2mm long so thats about 4 BBS long and maybe 2BBS tall.  You will have to make sure there's not too many hiding places for baby shrimp though. 

[CalmedByFish]

3 hours ago, CT_ said:

If there's a local fish club or FB group you can ask for peoples "cull" shrimp (ie the ones that aren't good enough colored to keep in the breeding colony).  Around here they sell for 1-2$ ea.

I'm not sure if they're too big or not but baby shrimp are really small ~2mm long so thats about 4 BBS long and maybe 2BBS tall.  You will have to make sure there's not too many hiding places for baby shrimp though. 

Thanks for the suggestion. I just hunted around on FB and requested membership to a swap group.