As my yellow convicts are growing and are very picky on what they eat, I am wanting to see if they take a liking to live shrimp. I dont want to buy ghosts becasue sometimes they are super gross. So I thought since cherries are so prolific this could be an option. Granted I wouldnt feed good looking females to the fish just males and crappy looking females. Does anyone have any experience with feeding cichlids RCS and whether or not there is a sufficient amount of nutritional value in RCS to be fed half the time? I hope I didnt break anyone heart by bringing this up.

I'm pretty sure I've seen others mention that they "cull the herd" by feeding some of the extras to fish.

I want to do more then cull. I want to feed out 75% or so of the stock. Keeping out of 100 mayeb 20 females and 5 males to keep the population going. If I can get 20 females putting out 30 shrimplets a month. I can cull out 20 adult shrimp a day after two to three months. The only thing I have no information on is the nutritional value of the shrimp. I will be feeding the RCS krill from Kensfish since my Yellow cons wont touch it. So I know the RCS will be getting alot of quality food, but will that nutrition be passed on to the cons like how people gutload crickets to feed to thier herps?

I know a guy who does this...he feeds his cherries to his killifish. He had thousands in his 30 gallon bare bottom tank with a little guppy grass, two sponge filter, and a single strip of 24" light. His cherries wasn't very red though.

Ry- I'd guess the cherries will be as nutritious as what you feed them.

I'd personally try it, but only as one food option since I'm a big proponent of varied diets since most fish are truly opportunistic omnivores in the wild.

I'm gonna go out on a limb (without any scientific analysis of the nutritional value) and say that if the shrimp are healthy and well fed, they should provide a very nice food source for fish

I don't know about nutritional value but I do cull and give them to my angels
and they seem to breed shortly after recieving the shrimp.???
Cindy

The problem that I have with my yellow cons is they are SO PICKY. They only eat my cheapo flake. They wont touch my krill superba from kensfish, they wont eat algae flake, they wont touch large golden pearls, and they wont touch the cichlid pellets I have. They have been eating my ramshorns snails which was a shock to me and this crappy flake food I have. Since they hunt my snails down I am sure they will take a fancy to cherries. Now I have to set up a cherry breeding tank that can support 600-700 cherries. I think that calls for my 30g to come out of hibernation. I hope my wife wont mind

I sometimes feed the RCS, that I find in my filter during maintenance, to my discus and angels.

i fed some to my lemon tetras yesterday... although by accident. oops.
i didnt think they were going to get eaten but they picked out two of the smallest ones.


i've been wondering why i've never seen baby shrimp. now i know.

Have you tried frozen foods? I honestly can't imagine convicts being that picky. I've seen fish that would turn their noses up at some flakes and pellets but it's usually a case of my dog won't eat dry dogfood because all I feed him is table scraps. Don't feed them for 3 or 4 days and see if they eat anything you throw in the tank.

Have you tried red worms? It might be a better (easier to culture in quantity, more nutrition) for them and you in the long run. A styro cooler in a cool place seeded with a few dozen red worms and fed veggy scraps and dried leaves will produce hundreds of worms in a couple of months. Plus if you judge the "work" involved in the cultures and bulk of the food you will be feeding, red worms will win over shrimp. Just about anything will eat them and a worm a piece a day will keep them fat.

I bought a pair of killies at an auction and for lack of a better place to put them I stuck them in my shrimp tank for a couple of days. Lost a whole generation in less than 48 hours. I haven't found many things that won't eat cherries, including newts...