Got a bamboo about a week ago, having some struggles.

Hey there.

I'm fairly new to this, so big beginner tag here. I've had my tank set up for a little over 2 months, with 10 neos, 10 ghost, 2 amanos, 4 nerites, and 1 oto cat fish. In that time I have only lost 1 neo and it was fairly recent.

As for the tank conditions themselves all I have are test strips, not a full kit. 55 gal tank, planted, phosphate and sponge filters. pH sitting somewhere between 6.8 and 7.2, 80 alkalinity, 40 hardness, no sodium chloride, nitrates, nitrites, chlorine, or ammonia.

So my worry is with my bamboo. It just won't filter feed. It seems shy, withdrawn, and only picks off the ground. It seems to be doing ok with decent energy levels, and is going to town on the bottom algae/snail refuse mix (I don't vacuum it up, I just mix it with the sand layer above the substrate). But despite finding it occasionally perched on the filter, it doesn't stay there long and does right back to the bottom.

Reading online told me it's not getting enough food, so I bought shrimp pellets and am grinding them up with a pestle and mortar, combining it with some water, and jetting it out of a syringe as near as it'll let me get. This is pretty new so I don't know if it's helping yet. The fish store suggested it might be getting ready to molt, and apparently it's a bigger deal for them than most shrimp. Makes sense with the new tank. I've had multiple other shrimp molt just fine so I'm not worried about the conditions there.

I just wanna know why my fella won't feed. I have very good flow right over a nice, algae covered piece of driftwood, and it can even hide under a nearby rock and stick its little hands into the stream... Which I saw it do at first.

Any advice here? I don't think its in any danger of dying but just wondering what's going on. Thanks!

Edit: Finally found him tonight filtering on a rock near the intake, also where some of the water is hitting down and off the log. Maybe he was just shy. We shall see.