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The answer first
Buy Hikari Shrimp Cuisine, and buy nothing else. It is the only food on this page with a complete published guaranteed analysis, and in a planted nano tank one 10 g tub lasts a cherry colony months. Hikari publishes 35% minimum protein, 14% maximum ash and 0.8% minimum phosphorus, names Caridina and Neocaridina specifically, and states that its mineral mix offers the nutrients “fundamental to proper ecdysis” - which is the only molting claim here with a published figure anywhere near it.
Buy the Aqueon discs instead if you are feeding a large or growing colony and the price per gram matters. Four dollars for 1.65 oz against seven for 0.35, with bentonite clay Aqueon publishes as aiding molting and shell production, and no fish meal. The trade is transparency: Aqueon publishes no guaranteed analysis for the discs at all.
Buy Bacter AE only if you are breeding, and dose it far under whatever chart you are reading. It is the community’s favorite and the published dose schedules disagree by roughly twenty-eight fold for the same tank volume, with no manufacturer page left to settle it. That is a real problem on a bacterial powder, and it is why a product we rate highly sits third.
Start by feeding less, not by buying more
Aqueon publishes that dwarf shrimp are “largely algae eaters” and that you should feed only what they clear in two to three minutes. Our shrimp tank page makes the same point: in a planted, established tank a colony finds most of its own food, and the most common error is feeding a shrimp tank like a fish tank. Uneaten food in 4.3 gallons of water is ammonia with a delay on it. Everything below is a supplement to grazing, not a diet.
How we judged these
A shrimp is an animal that has to shed and rebuild its exoskeleton every few weeks, and a failed molt is usually fatal. So the criteria here are not the ones you would use for fish food.
- Is there a published guaranteed analysis? One of the three has a complete one. The absence on the others is marked rather than filled in from a different product in the same brand’s range.
- Is the molting claim backed by a published figure or an ingredient? Hikari publishes phosphorus at 0.8% minimum and a stated ecdysis claim. Aqueon names bentonite clay and what it is for. Neither publishes calcium, which is the other half of a shell.
- Can the dose be established? This is where Bacter AE fails and where it matters most, because a bacterial powder consumes oxygen as it breaks down.
- Does the format suit a nano tank? Sinking pellets and discs reach the substrate where the colony grazes, and lift out whole if nobody eats them. A floating flake does neither.
- Will it survive a betta? Relevant on this site more than most. A betta learns where sinking food lands within about two days.
What the published analyses actually say
| Hikari Shrimp Cuisine | Aqueon Omnivore Discs | GlasGarten Bacter AE |
|---|
| Crude protein | 35% min | Not published | Not a food in this sense |
| Crude fat / fiber | 9.0% min / 6.0% max | Not published | Not published |
| Ash | 14% max | Not published | Not published |
| Phosphorus | 0.8% min | Not published | Not published |
| Calcium | Not published | Not published | Not published |
| Molting support, as published | “fundamental to proper ecdysis (shedding)” | Bentonite clay, “to aid with molting” | Not claimed - it feeds biofilm |
| Feeding quantity published | No - a time window only | No | Conflicting by about 28x |
| Package | 0.35 oz (10 g) | 1.65 oz | 35 g, 70 g, 140 g |
Read the calcium row. Not one of the three publishes a calcium figure, despite all three being sold for an animal whose shell is the thing it has to rebuild. That is the most striking gap in this category, and it is the reason this site treats water hardness rather than food as the primary calcium question - the snail page works through the same requirement for the same reason.
Why Hikari ranks first on a smaller tub at twice the price
Because the label is readable. Thirty-five percent protein is a sensible number for a grazing invertebrate rather than the 60-plus percent of a betta food, the 14% maximum ash tells you how much of it is mineral, and 0.8% minimum phosphorus is a published figure relevant to the one biological process that kills shrimp when it goes wrong. You can evaluate it.
The second reason is quantity, counterintuitively. Ten grams sounds absurd next to a tub of fish flake until you apply Hikari’s own feeding direction - only what the colony clears in a few minutes, uneaten food removed afterwards. A cherry colony in a planted 10-gallon clears a few sinking pellets. The tub is a months-long supply, and a larger one would go stale before it was finished.
The honest marks against it: no calcium figure, no feeding quantity (only a time window), and the sinking-pellet format is exactly what a betta in the same tank will intercept. If you keep both, feed at the opposite end from the fish and accept that some of it is feeding the betta.
The Aqueon discs, and the one thing they publish
Aqueon publishes almost nothing about these - no protein, no fat, no ash, no feeding directions - and publishes one thing that earns them second place: bentonite clay, stated to be there “to aid with molting and strong shell production”, in a formula with no fish meal. For an animal that in a planted tank is mostly eating biofilm and algae, leaving the fish meal out is a defensible formulation choice rather than a cost saving.
Two cautions, both from Aqueon’s own page. The guaranteed analysis circulating online for “Aqueon shrimp food” belongs to Aqueon Shrimp Pellets, a different product, and we have not reproduced it here as though it applied to the discs. And Aqueon’s page contradicts itself on which shrimp these are for, saying “Crystal and Bee Shrimp” in one place and “Crystal and Bumble Bee Shrimp” in another. Neither affects whether a cherry colony eats them, which it does.
The disc format is the practical advantage: one disc feeds several shrimp at once, so a colony does not fight over a single pellet, and an uneaten disc lifts out intact with tweezers rather than crumbling into the substrate.
Bacter AE: a product we rate, and a dose we will not print
This is the powder every shrimp keeper recommends, and it is not a food in the ordinary sense. The published composition is amino acids, polysaccharides, xylanase, glucanase, amylase, protease, hemicellulase, Bacillus subtilis and Pediococcus acidilactici. The point of it is to grow biofilm, and biofilm is what shrimplets actually survive on in their first weeks. For a colony you are trying to breed rather than merely keep alive, that is a real and specific job no pellet does.
Then there is the instruction problem. GlasGarten’s own domain no longer serves a product page - it resolves to a domain-parking page with no product information at all - so the only dose guidance available is retailers’ copies of an older label, and they do not agree. For the same 120 liter tank:
- One retailer publishes half a measuring spoon every two weeks for light stocking, half a spoon weekly for normal or heavy.
- Three others publish half a spoon daily for light stocking, one spoon daily for normal, and one spoon twice daily for heavy.
The spoon is about 0.5 g on every listing, so that is a spread of roughly twenty-eight times between the lowest and highest published rate for an identically described tank. All of them agree on a half dose for the first week, which is the only point of consensus.
Why this matters more than an ordinary labelling sloppiness: a bacterial and enzyme powder consumes oxygen as it is broken down. Over-dosing it in a nano tank is not a cloudy-water problem, it is an oxygen problem, and the published buyer warnings about crashing a tank with a full scoop are consistent with that mechanism. So the position here is: worth owning if you are breeding, start at the lowest published rate and go lower, and understand that nobody - including us - can point you at a manufacturer instruction any more.
What a colony actually needs, in order
- 01
An established planted tank, before any food at all
A tank that has been running with plants for a month is the minimum. Biofilm and algae on plant leaves, wood and glass is the base diet, and a colony in a bare new tank will slowly disappear regardless of what you feed it.
- 02
Water hard enough to build a shell in
Calcium comes from the water far more than from food - no shrimp food on the market publishes a calcium figure. Soft water is the usual reason molts fail in a tank that tests clean otherwise.
- 03
One food, fed sparingly
A few sinking pellets or one disc, only what they clear in a few minutes, and skipped days without guilt. This is where the tub on this page comes in, and it is the smallest part of the answer.
- 04
Their own molts left in the tank
The shed exoskeleton is eaten back for the calcium in it. Removing molts because they look like dead shrimp is a common and costly mistake.
- 05
A biofilm supplement, only if you are breeding
Shrimplets need particles smaller than any pellet. This is the one job Bacter AE does that nothing else here does, and the only reason to accept its dosing problem.
What we cannot tell you
How much of any of these to feed. Hikari publishes a time window and no quantity, Aqueon publishes neither, and Bacter AE’s published schedules contradict each other by a factor of twenty-eight. The honest method is the one the makers imply without specifying: put in a small amount, watch, and let the colony tell you by whether it is gone in a few minutes.
We also cannot tell you the calcium content of any shrimp food sold, because none of them publish it. If your molts are failing, the variable worth investigating is your water rather than your food, and that is a test kit question rather than a shopping one.
