I used the hbh crab and lobster bites for over a year, then switched to Hikari crab cusine - didn't really see a difference, the hikari just became more available to me. Those seaweed selects are awesome... I dont' weight it down or anything... just tear off a piece of the sheet and toss it in. As it becomes water logged, the shrimp fiddle with it on the surface and when it starts to drop they just float with it down. A few minutes later and it's covered in shrimp. Omega One veggie rounds seem to be more popular than hikari algae wafers for my RCS... dunno what that is all about. More recently I've been using
HBH Frozen food alternative with spirulina and they just go ape over it.
I've been adding vitachem to the water for the last few months as well. Not sure if it's making any difference yet.
Sponge filters are great, but those bubble-box type like from Lee's and Penn Plax work great as well. They're the green or transparent boxes you can shove crushed coral/filter media into and then an airstone drives the bubbles through a tube with creates the flow into and out of the filter. They come with a top but I leave the top off and the shrimp scavenge any edibles that get sucked into the floss. The kind with the airstone is much more gentle and is the one I'd recommend... not the ones that just shoot big fat bubbles up. Same pros as a sponge filter, but more easily customized.
In a larger shrimp tank ( 29 gal or more), any power filter will be fine with a Filtermax III prefilter. I find them at thatpetplace.com, among other places. They fit wonderfully on canister filter intakes, aquaclear intakes, and indeed every filter I've tried them on so far. I run a 200 gph aquaclear filter with that prefilter on a 29 gallon shrimp tank and it works beautifully. Even for smaller shrimp tanks, that prefilter fits an aquaclear mini just fine too.
Instead of trying to net shrimp when it's time to move or sell/trade some, I was told a trick and I've been using it ever since. Cut the top off a plastic soda bottle ( 16 oz, 20 oz, whatever), and flip it upsidedown back into the bottle. It might take some practice, but you'll get it so that it'll fit right after a try or two. Bait it with a piece of algae wafer or something. Sumberge it in the shrimp tank, letting it fill up with water. A few hours later, it should be full of shrimp. They go into the hole, but when they try to go back out they can't find it and run up the sides of the bottle and can't get out. You don't want to leave them in this trap overnight or for more than 4-6 hours as it is not subject to being properly filtered. Pull the trap out and pour them into a specimen container. Fill another specimen container with water from the tank and net them from the first one to the second one. Whatever shrimp you don't want, pour back into the tank from the first container. ( Don't want to use the trap's water for transporting shrimp as it has not been properly filtered already for a few hours and may have algae wafer debris in it) This method should prevent much of the netting damage shrimp are prone to, and save some stress.