Keeping shrimp alive

[David Johnson]

There was a recent post asking how long sand shrimp will live.

One to five days depending on how you take care of them and how long they were out of the bay before you bought them. If you can get them from a place like Tillamook Bait that keeps them alive in a tank, all the better.

The thing that kills them is the amonia in their urine. If you can keep them cool and out of that urine they will stay happy and alive.

Fresh water will also kill them so don't leave them open to the rain or rinse them off with fresh water. They are a salt water critter.
This is also the reason they don't live as long and they appear soft at this time of the year, all the fresh water run-off from the rivers into the bays.

The first thing you have to do is get them out of the container they came in. A lot of us put them into a plastic tray. I do this after putting down a couple layers of paper towels. Then I change those towels every evening and every morning. This seems to work well for me.

There were several other things that guys posted on that thread that sounded like they worked good. Oat meal and wood chips. Although I would worry about the smell of the chips getting in the shrimp.

One of my good clients pointed me in this direction. He learned it from one of the commercial shrimpers and I am going to go this rout.

Go to a hardwere store and buy a sheet of light defuser. It's plastic screaning with about one inch holes that is used in over head lighting. Cut it to fit into the bottom of a small "six pack" cooler and then spread your shrimp out in the bottom of this. It will keep them up and out of the urine. You can then keep one of those blue ice packs in the top of the cooler while fishing.

This new way of storing them sounds even better than the paper towels because the paper towels will start to stink. :shocked: