Back when i was younger i raised a few oscars and fed them grass shrimp as a part of their diet. (Grass shrimp are small, grow to about inch 1/4 max; also known as ghost shrimp, or glass shrimp because they are almost transparent) Now my young oscars have grown big enough to where they can handle grass shrimp. Only problem is my LFS that used to sell grass shrimp does not sell them any more...

Soooo im thinking that there are a couple places that i can go catch some wild grass shrimp nearby. Im wondering though would i have to worry about disease from wild caught grass shrimp???

Furthermore, i searched a bit about breeding grass shrimp, and found some but not alot of info. i think it would be worthwhile to do, rather then continuously going to catch some. Does anyone have any experience in breeding grass shrimp??

No problem, you can feed this type of food to your Oscar assuming that where you harvest them form is not contaminated water.

As for breeding them, I really don't know. Brine shrimp are easy to breed, many places sell eggs ready for the process, but I don't think that the larger shrimp are as easy to breed, they would obviously take a lot longer to grow. To be quite honest, if they are easy to catch then I don't see any advantage in trying to breed them yourself, just go catch them when you need them, you can normally keep shrimps alive for a few days if you keep the water nice and clean.

OFL wrote

i totally agree with OFL on this. if they are available in your area, it shows you have
healthy environment. grass shrimps are sensitive too to contaminants, thus if they
are thriving and healthy, no need to worry feeding them to your oscar. in my case,
they are the cheapest feeds available to me. and if i don't have viand, i just deep
fried the shrimp and i enjoy them crispy with spicy vinaigrette..

mmmmmmm i love shrimp, there's fried shrimp, cocktail shrimp, shrimp kabobs, shrimp fajitas, shrimp gumbo, shrimp tacos, shrimp shrimp, big shrimp, jumbo shrimp.....

LMAO!! Thor have you been watching Forrest Gump?

hey surprising as this may sound but i have bought ghost shrimp as they call them at walmart for years. 50 at a time. generally speaking... i go in, and buy all they have lol. its ilke 6 dollars. stuff is cheap live food, i love em. and while feeder fish have gotten my fish sick many numerous times so much that i stopped feeding them live fish, but the shrimp have never once given me any problems. i just kept them in a 10 gallon aquarium with a few snails and a dragon fish and 1 electric yellow (till it got big enough to fit the shrimp in its mouth).

anyways when id buy that many of them, i would get 15-20 females with eggs under their tails. i know right there that coulda been ghost shrimp. but i never once saw a baby shrimp in my tank either. its possible they got sucked into the filtration or whtever but i know if you could breed in a highly planted tank with no other fish. it wouldnt have to be really big either just well filtered. if you used the sponge filters on your inlet tube for your filtration on it i think you could keep them from geting sucked into it.

i might have to give the shrimp thing a go. keep some in a 10 gallon under the big tank... the ones i see are like 33 cents a piece tho

well at walmart they were 13 cents a piece forever, but then ilke 4-5 months ago they went up to 26 cents each. considering i was feeding 2 2" long pufferfish... a shirmp a day each and they were very well fed lol. u know when your fish cost you a quarter a day you love them lol.

Thor84 wrote:

what???? 33 cents a piece??? how big is it?
33 cent grass shrimp in my place is good for two weeks feeds already.
that shrimp in the bowl cost me 8 cents only, alive and jumping...

about 1 inch long... 33 cents per shrimp.

Win wrote:


Gotto get some and try if Sinatra, that's whats my puffies called,LiL' Blue eyes,
likes them.
Tryd to fool him with some Ciclid mini pellets, he tasted them all, but spiy them all out.
Might try some mall shrimp.
what size wouldt I need for a 1 inch Dwarf?

dwarf what?

my puffers would eat a shrimp nearly as long as it was lol... they will bite chunks out, get full, and let a shrimp swim off with parts missing lol. anymore tho the 2" puffers will eat a whole one. u might try sun dried gamarus. thats what i feed mine when i cant get ghosties.