Gravel vacuuming with shrimp

[fishorama]

I tried a brine shrimp net but I usually have too much "mulm" & ended up dumping some back. A baster is a good idea. I think that every time but still haven't got 1 for fish.

 

[captmicha]

It's tricky. Most of what people told me to do didn't work. Putting food in one location and vacuuming elsewhere didn't help because not every shrimp was hungry, I guess, and I picked up a lot. Putting stockings on the end of the gravel vac does get the water changed and keeps shrimp from going into the water change bucket but you can't get rid of the mulm since it can't get past the stockings. I tried through the filter but that was annoying, slow, and didn't work most of the time. I bit the bullet and just vacuumed and then picked out as many shrimp as I could and bit my nails as I poured the water in the toilet, fearing that I was flushing live shrimp that I couldn't see. The turkey baster was okay but slow going.

The method with best results was to use an airline to siphon the water out. I hardly ever found baby shrimp in my bucket when I did that.