Can You Eat Ghost Shrimp?

Ghost shrimps are widely used as feeders but did you ever wonder if you can eat ghost shrimps? You are not alone. I have heard this question many times. If you have the same query then here is the answer for you: 

You can eat ghost shrimps as they are safe to eat. But eating ghost shrimps is not worth the effort and you may not want to eat them. 

Below, I am including every detail so that you can decide whether you want to eat ghost shrimps and is it worth the effort or not! You will also get the answer why I said that you may not want to eat them. So, let’s not talk any further and dive into the details!

Not Worth The Effort

According to me, eating ghost shrimps is not worth the effort even though it is safe to eat it. Firstly, you cannot eat the whole ghost shrimp. You have to remove the shell from the body. Secondly, after you remove the shell you will get a very little amount of flesh from each of the ghost shrimp. 

The shrimp body with the shell is about 1.5 inches but without the shell, the body is half of it. The inside shrimp body is mostly gooey so you can hardly find any solid flesh to eat. Even if you cook it, it doesn’t cook that well.

Many people fry it with the shell sometimes but you cannot eat the shell even if you fry it. You can only eat the flesh of the ghost shrimp so according to me, there is no point frying the ghost shrimp with the shell. 

Ways To Cook/Eat Ghost Shrimps 

If you really want to try out ghost shrimps then, firstly, you have to remove the shell from its body as you can only eat the inside body of a ghost shrimp. After removing the shell, clean if there is any spine on the back of the body. After removing the shells rinse the shrimp bodies with water. 

Now that you have the flesh of the shrimps you can cook them in a couple of ways. Some of the ways you can eat ghost shrimps are: 

• Deep fry: You can directly fry them in deep oil and eat it. Another way is, you can dip the flesh into butter, or egg and corn flour then fry them. These are the easy ways to eat ghost shrimp. 
• Curry: You can also make curry type of dishes if you have a good amount of ghost shrimps. 
• Flavorings: You can eat ghost shrimps by using them as flavorings to any dishes or salads. 

After you cook ghost shrimps it will change into a reddish or orange color. 

The Reason Why You Would Not Want To Eat 

Many people all over the world love to eat sea shrimps and if you give them ghost shrimps to eat, they won’t hesitate to eat them up too. But, will you eat ghost shrimps after knowing what they eat? Ghost shrimps are natural scavengers and they eat almost everything they can. 

If you keep some ghost shrimps in your tank and observe them you will see them picking foods for them from the tank which even includes other tank mates poops as well. As ghost shrimps eat fish poops for this one particular reason many people do not eat ghost shrimps even though they can. 

Some Other Ways To Use Ghost Shrimps 

If you have so many ghost shrimps but don’t want to eat or throw them, there are some other ways to use them as well. Let’s see how we can use ghost shrimps: 

Use as feeders:

Ghost shrimps are used as feeders by many fish keepers. Big fishes love and enjoy eating ghost shrimps. Ghost shrimps are full of proteins so if you feed them to other species it will be beneficial for their health. 

Big fishes like Cichlids, discus, angelfish love to eat ghost shrimps. If you have any of these fishes with your ghost shrimps in the same tank, you will see them chasing the ghost shrimps to eat them up. So, you can just keep and feed them to your other tank species and trust me they will love to eat the ghost shrimps.

Prepare fish food: 

Previously I said that you can feed ghost shrimps directly to your tank species that are big enough to eat the shrimps. Besides this way, you can also prepare fish food with ghost shrimps and feed every type of species. 

Preparing fish food with ghost shrimps is very easy. First, cut the shrimp into pieces and put them into the food processor. Depending on what type of fish you want to feed, the other things that you need to make the food will vary. Generally, a fish food contains a portion of protein, a portion of vegetables, and flavorings. 

For vegetables, you can use anything as the choice is endless. However, experienced fish keepers recommend using carrots, spinach, peas, etc. Put all of these and the ghost shrimps into the food processor again so that they get mixed well. 

In the end, use some sheets of gelatin to the mixture so that it turns into a semi-solid form. After the mix gets formed cut them into little pieces. The fish food is fully ready now to feed to your fishes. 

Use as tank cleaners:

Ghost shrimps can benefit you in many ways and one of them is they will help you in cleaning the tank. As ghost shrimps are natural scavengers, they will eat almost everything they can find in your tank. They eat the leftover foods, fish poop, and other wastes in your tank. 

They also eat algae in your tank and help in keeping the level down. Keep 6-8 ghost shrimps in your tank and you will see how they play a great role in cleaning the tank. 

Conclusion 

Now that you know ghost shrimps are safe to eat, you can try some if you are very curious about how it tastes. But, cooking it to eat is not worth the effort according to me. So, I would recommend you to use ghost shrimps as feeders rather than eating them.

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