Stoopid reply from me, but of course Amano are also Caridina.
You can't take the pedant out of the man !
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What happened to our obsession with the Amano shrimp?
- Thread starter Art
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You can't take the pedant out of the man !
Personally I love them. Dont know why. I just find them great. I try to breed, have only succeeded once on the latest clutch, and even then only 3 made it to juvenile. But I love them, They grow to a great size too.
I enjoy shrimp in general. I've never been sure they did that much, but I just think they're cool. So I'm with you.
If you are a member of the AGA, there is a guy who did a great presentation on breeding Amanos. You can look at that, but if you have successfully raised them, you are probably already ahead of the game.
What's the AGA? I dont know it - I just went from a couple of videos, what little there is online, and trial and error
Kwyet
After every new tank—“This is my last one!”
Aquatic Gardeners Association
www.aquatic-gardeners.org
Aquatic Gardeners Association Information
www.aquatic-gardeners.org
So much good stuff!
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I have now experienced Amanos eating my plants on two occasions. I know everyone says that they won't do this if your plants are healthy, and that's probably true, but when a plant is struggling a little bit and starts to show signs of stress, the Amanos eating it definitely don't help it bounce back 
The latest was some Alternanthera Reineckii that I took from a very overcrowded tank so it had some algae and was generally not in peak health. I cleaned them up and planted them in my tank. Within a couple days, my ~5 amano shrimp had started eating holes in the leaves that remained. At this point, I started a couple month long battle where I continually trimmed off holey leaves and kept my tank clean with lots of CO2. The plants were never able to recover because every time they put on new leaves, they were promptly munched. The other plants in the tank did just fine and grew out to peak health as usual after the initial cleanup, but the AR never could because of the constant damage.
Since this experience, I am soured on Amanos. I will stick with only Neo and Caridina dwarf shrimp going forward.
The latest was some Alternanthera Reineckii that I took from a very overcrowded tank so it had some algae and was generally not in peak health. I cleaned them up and planted them in my tank. Within a couple days, my ~5 amano shrimp had started eating holes in the leaves that remained. At this point, I started a couple month long battle where I continually trimmed off holey leaves and kept my tank clean with lots of CO2. The plants were never able to recover because every time they put on new leaves, they were promptly munched. The other plants in the tank did just fine and grew out to peak health as usual after the initial cleanup, but the AR never could because of the constant damage.
Since this experience, I am soured on Amanos. I will stick with only Neo and Caridina dwarf shrimp going forward.
Reviving this thread. Never kept Amanos in previous planted tanks because they’re not readily available and typically pretty expensive. But I just picked up some small ones from my LFS for a decent price ($6.50/ea for juveniles and got a few extra free). If they all survive I’ll definitely have too many for my tank— 7 in a 12 gallon but I’ll deal with that later.
I wanted to give them a go this time because there’s definitely been an uptick in the amount of people emphasizing good cleanup crews, and I wanted to try it out on my new setup. My tank is cycled but not planted yet and just has a gnarly amount of biofilm everywhere, especially on my driftwood. I’m on my second RO only tank and have found that neocaridinas just haven’t been thriving as much as they had in my previous tap water tanks, probably because I haven’t quite dialed in my GH and TDS . Either way they haven’t done as much for algae as I’d like, so I thought I’d try some Amanos.
As for the concerns listed in this thread so far regarding Amanos and water parameters, feeding behavior, and escaping, that’s something I’ll find out about as we go along.
I wanted to give them a go this time because there’s definitely been an uptick in the amount of people emphasizing good cleanup crews, and I wanted to try it out on my new setup. My tank is cycled but not planted yet and just has a gnarly amount of biofilm everywhere, especially on my driftwood. I’m on my second RO only tank and have found that neocaridinas just haven’t been thriving as much as they had in my previous tap water tanks, probably because I haven’t quite dialed in my GH and TDS . Either way they haven’t done as much for algae as I’d like, so I thought I’d try some Amanos.
As for the concerns listed in this thread so far regarding Amanos and water parameters, feeding behavior, and escaping, that’s something I’ll find out about as we go along.
Some options for supplemental food, to help them grow up!
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The Shrimp Farm Shrimp Food - 20g
The Shrimp Farm Shrimp Food is our own custom shrimp food that consists of only natural materials and excludes all unneccesary chemical additives. This is the food we currently feed our own shrimp in our shop and we can say first hand that both Neocaridina and Caridina shrimp LOVE IT. Our food...
This is handy
Are Your Tank Parameters Good For Neocaridina Shrimp? - Shrimply Explained
www.shrimplyexplained.com
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CincyScaper
Active Member
In my limited experience I think an algae clean up crew is a hype. I had Amanos in my tank with tons of hair algae and they did virtually nothing. I don’t have moss so maybe they play a roll there. Currently they are more of a nuisance for me since they eat/damage Buce tissue culture. I have Otos, but I just find them a nice addition in general not for any clean up reasons. My take on cleanup crew after watching lot of experienced folks talking about it is that they seem to help during the diatoms phase which usually self resolves anyway. Lot of hype on videos might be because it is a win win for people producing content, they have new videos to make, more info to share and if they are supported by a fish store they can sell more. Just my 2 cents.
I think what helps is plant mass, stability, microbiome, light planning and horticulture which all will tip the favor towards plants and against algae.
I believed this for years, while also having a large neocaridina colony in every tank for fun. Then I got apistos, and they taught the diamond tetras to hunt shrimp and they decimated the population and sent the rest into hiding. Then the apistos had babies and I went a couple of weeks with a little extra feeding and no water changes. Suddenly I had a huge issue with particulate organic matter like I have never experienced before! Obviously the overfeeding and lack of maintenance were major self-inflicted contributing factors, but I have been accustomed to having a little bit of wiggle room there. I think the shrimp colony provided that buffer and without them I need to be much more mindful about that kind of stuff.
I'm still digging myself out of this mess, but things are on their way to being fixed. It just takes a long time to grow 18" of clean plants without supplemental CO2 in a tank that's off whack (and an aquarist who was caught off guard). One of the things I have been doing is using the shrimp in my other tanks to clean the plants in the messy tank and it's amazing how they have them picked clean in a couple of hours.
I do think those things are all mandatory in a way that a clean up crew isn't, but I'll never take them for granted again.
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CincyScaper
Active Member
No experience with them, good to know though.
techman81
Valuable Member
So above is what I posted 8 months ago. My experience and views have changed. I started out with 10-12 Amanos in my first 49g tank, and they of course, started out small. I think things went well for that first 6 months, but it seems the bigger they get, the less value they add and more nuisance they become. I have a lot of AR Mini in that tank. As others here have commented recently (as well as reports on Reddit) Amanos apparently love AR Mini. It may be something they do as they're bigger or perhaps when other food sources in the tank fall off, but over the last few months I too, began seeing my AR Mini get decimated. I initially thought it was age and plant health do to something I was missing, but like others, I've caught the Amanos in the act of chowing down on the leaves. By this time, I only had 4 large Amanos left in the tank, so I moved them to a newer tank still going through early algae struggles but had no AR Mini. So far AR leaf decimation has significantly slowed, if not completely stopped. Meanwhile, there's a quickly growing population of wild Neocaridina in the same tank that are staying quite busy feeding on algae, and whatever else, among my Phoenix moss and dwarf hairgrass. I think I will stick to those going forward and skip the Amanos.
Thanks for the update. I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up running into the same issues, especially with such a large group in such a small tank. I’ll probably give them away if they get big and cause problems.
