Hi guys, I just bought a bag of cooked frozen shrimp from the grocery but it contains salt and sodium tripolyphosphate. Would this be ok to feed my goldies?

It's almost impossible to find frozen cooked shrimp that don't contain salt and sodium tripolyphosphate.

I have fed this type of shrimp to my fish, but I've always soaked them in a couple of cups of tank water for an hour or so before feeding them to my fish. Soaking gets a lot of the salt and tripolyphosphate out of the shrimp.

If you can find them... Frozen uncooked shrimp or raw shrimp are a MUCH better choice.

I didn't know you could feed raw shrimp...I've always cooked mine before feeding. That's great to know!

Thanks for the replies guys, I'll soak the shrimp first before I feed them to my goldies.

I used raw shrimp, they're great, and probly cheaper

Isn't there a risk of harmful bacteria in feeding raw shrimp?

I never had problems... I thought most shrimps are from a farm...

They do? I thought most shrimps are wild caught

okay... now we're gonna need a third person to help us solve this...

hehehe the mistery is on, i always thought they were caught in the ocean also :S

Shrimp can either be wild or farmed, just like salmon, catfish and tilapia.

Over 80% of the shrimp consumed in the United States are farm raised. The biggest suppliers of farm raised shrimp are Brazil,China, Ecuador, India, Thailand and Vietnam.

I fed the boys some shrimp for the first time today - they went nuts - they loved it!

I bought fresh shrimp but I did cook them a little, only until they just turned pink. Although I bought fresh, uncooked shrimp, the sign at the fish market counter(Whole Foods, to be exact) said that the shrimp had been salted and frozen previously (these shripmp were not frozen or bagged but from the fish counter! I guess for their long trip form China - they came from a farm there. So, how does one know for sure that the shrimp has no salt - becuase I bought the uncooked ones and still they were salted?!

Also, how does coming form a farm v. the ocean mean that the fish are disease-free? In my mind, all raw fish would carry a potential risk (mainly from handling) - perhaps slightly decreased in farmed shrimp depending how they are farmed...

I love my GF but I am not sure that I can start buying 20bucks/lb. kind! Because even then, I ma stillnot sure they have never been salted...

Salting is used to keep the product plump as it draws water into the product preventing dehydration.

Even raw un-processed shrimp contain between 52-120mgs of sodium per 3oz serving. The wide variation is due to the many different types of shrimp there are.

The lowest sodium frozen shrimp I've been able to find in the USA is Kroger brand white shrimp. They're 51-60 count, un-cooked,headless and still have the shells on. They contain 70mgs of sodium for four ounces, which is about 15 individual shrimp. I feed two of these at a time to five goldfish ranging in size from 4-9" in size, which get the sodium down to less than 2mgs per fish.

Here's a picture of the bag, so you'll know what to look for.

what about bags of the really teeny shrimp? Those are cheaper than buying the larger ones.

51-60 a pound shrimp are pretty darn tiny in my book. But those REALLY TINY cocktail shrimp are almost always sold cleaned and cooked and have high amounts of salt and also contain sodium tripolyphosphate... We made it all the way back to where this post started.

Aha! So, I need to do a lot of research here... If the bag says 70mg sodium, does that differentiate beween salt content of the shrimp and salt as an additive for preservation?

Is Kroger a grocery store? If so, we don't have it around here but I will definitley look for something that meets the same specs you posted - thanks. I will prolly try to buy frozen since I will wind up having to freeze it anyway, why bother buying fresh - unless, of course, it will affect the soduim concentration. I will talk to the guy at the fish counter - he must be his eyes already!

RAW v. COOKED - I noticed that it took the boys a very long time to chew the shrimp - is that becuase it was (barely) cooked? So, I guess the advantage of feeding raw shrimp is that it is easier for them to eat? And possibly to digest?

I also gave them some zucchini, they loved it! I have not seem GN so happy in such a long time! He won't even eat from my hand he scurries right to the bootom to eat like a good fish! He has not done that for months! I wish I had started feeding them people-food a long time ago!

Sorry then. Just a thought that came to my head.

The conversation was going towards shrimp being expensive. It was just a suggestion. Sorry.

Gia, I'm sorry... I lost the drift of the thread when I had to go back up to the first post to get the correct spelling for sodium tripolyphosphate. I just thought it was kinda unique that this thread has held together long enough that we made it full circle.

Shrimp are expensive, but do you realize that shrimp are cheaper now than ever before in the USA. Now I'm talking about inflation indexed dollars, not just 2006 dollars. All the imported farm raised frozen shrimp have driven down the price of shrimp to where the gulf coast shrimp fishermen can't hardly cover the cost of their fuel when they go out to catch shrimp.

Graham, If I'm not mistaken, any and all sodium in the food has to be listed. It doesn't mater if it's naturally occurring sodium in the food, salt added for flavor or sodium tripolyphosphate as a preservative.

Fish take a long time eating shrimp, because they have to break up the muscle fibers without cutting type teeth (yes, I know they have grinding type teeth in their throats). Heck... I'd be slow eating shrimp too... If I had to gum them to death. I try and cut the shrimp into VERY small pieces before I feed them to my fish.

Yeah... Kroger is a chain grocery store. I though it was nation wide, but I guess every area has their own grocery chains.

I might have to try shrimp for my babies since y'all say they like them so much! I'm not a shrimp eater so I never think about checking out the seafood section in the store.
We have Kroger here too but in other states they have different chain names even though it is all under the same corporation... maybe you have one of these Graham?
http://www.thekrogerco.com/

Bak2it....do you cook yours a little first or give them raw. It seems to me (but like I said I don't eat or cook them) that if you cook a little but not enough or too much, that might make them tougher?

I leave them raw, and cut them up into real small pieces. Even my big fish seem to prefer small pieces.