Green peas can be safely fed to your Caridina (i.e. Crystal Red) and Neocaridina (i.e. Red Cherry) shrimps. Aquatic snails (such as Apple Snails, Bladder Snails, Malaysian Trumpet Snails, Mystery Snails, Pond Snails, Ramshorn Snails) will also greatly enjoy eating this vegetable.
You can take a look at this step-by-step tutorial to see how you can feed green peas to these invertebrates.
What green peas can you feed your shrimps and snails
When it comes to green peas that are safe for your pet shrimps and snails, you should organic versions with no salt or other additives.
How much green peas should you feed your shrimps and snails?
If you are feeding green peas for the first time, we recommend adding just one or two seedlings in your tank.
If your shrimps and/or snails don’t seem to interested in eating the peas after 2 hours, then we suggest that you reduce the feeding size the next time you feed peas.
If your pets can’t get enough of the vegetable and were easily able to eat all of it within 2 hours, then you can try adding a few more seedlings in future feedings.
How often should you feed green peas to your shrimps and snails?
Green peas should be treated as a healthy snack for your pet shrimps and snails. Therefore, we don’t recommend feeding it more than once a week.
When it comes to daily meals for your shrimps, we recommend feeding Shrimp King Complete, Shrimp King Mineral and/or Shrimp King as these will provide a healthy and balanced diet.
Your pet snails will eat the same food as your shrimps. Therefore, the Shrimp King brand should also be good enough for them as well.
How to feed green peas to your pet shrimps and snails
In order to properly prepare green peas to feed your pet shrimps and snails, we recommend that you take the following steps:
1. To begin, we recommend that you boil your green peas.
In addition to defrosting the vegetable, boiling will also kill off potentially harmful bacteria and make the peas soft enough for your pets to eat.
To boil, you can put peas in a pot with water on a stove. You can also try microwaving the vegetable with water although the peas may explode into pieces if you aren’t careful.
What works well for us, however, is that we put the green peas in a small bowl and then simply add boiling water.
2. After boiling the green peas with hot water for a few minutes, we recommend letting the vegetables sit in the same water and then let it cool down for at least 10 minutes.
3. Once the water feels lukewarm, we then suggest that you add a drop of a dechlorinator like Seachem Prime if you used tap water to boil your veggies.
While boiling will help remove most of the chlorine and chloramine, there may be some small traces left.
For the uninformed, chlorine and chloramine will kill off the beneficial biological filtration in your aquarium. This may lead to spikes to the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels.
Shrimps are especially sensitive to water quality. Therefore, it is better to be safe than sorry and add a drop of dechlorinator if you were using tap water to boiled the green peas.
4. Next, remove the peas from the water.
5. With your fingers, rip open the outer skin of the green peas and then remove the seeds inside.
If you feed green peas as a whole, then your shrimps and/or snails would have a hard time eating the outer skin. Therefore, we recommend that you only feed the seed portions.
6. Now hold the seeds with your thumb and index finger and dip it slightly at the top of your aquarium.
7. Next, you should gently grind the seed back and forward to break it into little pieces.
This will spread the vegetable around so that your shrimps and snails won’t have to fight over the food.
8. After two hours have passed, we recommend removing any remaining uneaten green peas portion you see in the tank.
Otherwise, the food will eventually decompose, leading to potential spikes in ammonia, nitrites and nitrates.
How to get your pet shrimps and snails interested in eating green peas?
If your pet shrimps and/or snails aren’t showing any interest in green peas, then we recommend that you don’t feed them for at least 24 hours beforehand. With an empty stomach, they should be more willing to costume the vegetable.
Recap
Green peas should be safe for your pet shrimps and snails as long as there are no additives.
When preparing the vegetables, you should boil it and then remove the seeds from the outer skin. We then recommend breaking the seeds apart in smaller pieces when you put them in your tank so that your shrimps and/or snails won’t have to fight over the meal.
If your pets aren’t interested in the vegetable, then you might want to try fasting your shrimps and/or snails at least 24 hours before trying to feed theme green peas.