Snowflake Shrimp Food

Introduction

Welcome to our page of general information about the popular shrimp food known as ‘snowflake’. It’s an increasingly popular food for shrimp of all many kinds and has been one of our favourites for quite some time now. We’ve tried to explain all we know about it so you can get best from your shrimp food and see the widest smiles on their little faces.

What is it made of?

Snowflake pellets are made of Soybean husks (or hulls), you can read more about this in our article about what snowflake shrimp food is made of. Soy bean hulls are the fibrous shells that are left once the inner bean has been removed. These crispy morsels are actually quite nutritious and when they are condensed into dehydrated pellets, you get lots of layers of all stacked up together into a tight package of tasty goodness. Find out a little more about how snowflake shrimp food is made.

Soybeans and Soybean Hulls or Husks — On the left, are soybeans in the field, emerging from the pod. On the right are the husks, removed from the beans

Snowflake Shrimp Food Nutritional Information

Table 1: Typical nutritional values of snowflake soybean hulls

Parameter	Percentage of dry weight (%)
Protein	12.8
Fibre	39.1
Fats & Oils	2.1
Lignin	2.4
Starches	5.7
Sugars	1.2

Table 2: The mineral constituents of snowflake soybean hulls

Parameter	Percentage of dry weight (%)
Calcium	5.6
Phosphorus	1.7
Phytate phosphorus	1
Magnesium	2.5
Potassium	13

These are general figures as a guide.

Snowflake as a shrimp food

The tightly packed layers of absorb water gradually as the pellet settles on the floor of the tank. This leads to a pleasing expansion of the pellets and causes pale flakes to peel off into a nice broad area that allows a good number of shrimp to nibble at the same time.

Shrimp will usually start gathering quickly to pick over the flakes, eating up the soft fluffy parts first. The interesting thing is that the flakes themselves aren’t the whole meal.

When flakes have had several hours in the tank, their surface will start to bloom with Mycelial fungi part of the natural biofilm that shrimp love to consume. Unless you leave the flakes for days with attention from shrimp, you won’t see this growth with the naked eye but it provides an extra nutritious condiment for the shrimp to enjoy with their snowflakes.

Compared with the vast majority of aquarium food snowflake delivers very few pollutants to the water. You can leave soy flake in the tank for longer and feed in larger amounts with less of an impact on your water conditions. Under normal feeding conditions there’s little need to feed so heavily, the ‘little and often’ approach still stands but it does make snowflake a fantastic food to tide your shrimp over if you go away on holiday.

Holiday feeding shrimp with snowflake

Neocaridina Davidi Shrimp on Choala Wood — We love our wild shrimp as much as our cherries, for us it’s about thriving life more than pedigree

Snowflake pellets make a great food to keep shrimp going for an extended period of time for several reasons

It sinks and remains on the bottom (rather than dissolving)
Low water pollution
Flakes grow nutritious fungi over time

Choosing the right amount of feed to add for the time you’ll be away can be a little tricky. It’s best to first find out how much snowflake get’s eaten entirely in one day in your tank.

Our rule-of-thumb is to add one ‘days worth’ for each day we’ll be away up to 3 days worth maximum. In our heavily planted and bio-active tank, we have found that is enough to keep our shrimp alive and well for 5 days without any signs of harm.

Should I only feed snowflake to my shrimp?

Certainly not. Shrimp do best on a gently varying diet of supplied food and natural nutrients from the biofilm of the tank.

There is no one food alone that’s the best way to feed shrimp. Snowflake is a great part of a nutritious mix of foods for a population of shrimp.

We recommend including real vegetables in addition to shop bought feeds like snowflake and encouraging a healthy planted tank to keep our little shrimpies smiling. We feed with snowflake 3 or 4 times a week with our own tanks in varying amounts and sometimes alongside other foods.

nutritious shrimp foods — These are just a few things we feed our shrimp (and other residents) alongside snowflake pellets.

So what have we learned?

So in addition to being a great source of food for people, the humble soy bean provides excellent nutrition for our crustacean friends and works incredibly well as a dried pellet. This makes ‘Snowflake’ pellets a highly popular choice for the modern shrimp keeper, it’s convenient, nutritious, water-friendly and uniquely interesting. Thanks for reading, why not check out our blog to see what else we’ve written about and you can see plenty of pictures and videos by following us on Facebook and Youtube