Can I produce fish food from overcrowding shrimp?
I recently moved my aquarium from my desk to a shelve and missed intensive inspections for a couple of months. I noticed that I don't have about 50 (which is already much), but a few hundred red cherry shrimp; population potentially growing. Since that might be stressful for all inhabitants in a 60l freshwater aquarium, I was wondering whether it's possible to reduce the number by producing fish food for Mollies from a bunch of them?
I'd start by killing them in a -21°C saturated salt water bath which should cause immediate deadly systemic shock. Then freeze and cut them and store them into my freezer. That way, I should be able to feed the pieces over time.
Freeze-drying would be a good conservation, but requires industrial equipment afaik.
Does this approach make sense: Will the meat remain consumable over - let's say - half a year? Can I cut up the whole bodies or do I need to peal the shrimp? Are there parts I should remove (organs filtering toxins, especially fat parts which are considered bad diet for aquarium fish)?
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Shrimp won't cause any noticeable bioload in a tank, especially a 60l one, and they won't 'stress out' any inhabitants other than solo fish, such as a betta, which shouldn't really have anything sharing the tank with it anyway.
As for using them as food, I'm not sure it'd work - if you fish don't actively eat the shrimp currently, then they are unlikely to be bothered about eating them once they are dead either as they are likely herbivores
If you happen to have another tank that has loaches in (I know both Pakistani and Clown loaches will) they will eat shrimps and snails quite happily.
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