Caridina Japonica – Amano shrimp

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Caridina japonica is the most common shrimp present in aquariums, is also known as Amano Shrimp because Takashi Amano has been the first one to introduce them in his aquariums, noticing their habit to eat algae.

Caridina japonica, native of Japan, Korea and Taiwan, is a small transparent grey shrimp with black spots covering the body and a white line from the head to the tail; the body colour can anyway change a bit due food nutrients and water quality.

Aquarium life


Amano shrimp can live in every aquarium, prefer neutral or lightly acid PH, temperature can fluctuate between 71°F and 82°F (22°C – 28°C), while water hardness has not to be too much soft, because being a crustacean Caridina needs calcium and other minerals to grow healthy.

Being really shy, it is better to house them in large groups in the aquarium, or they would spend the most of the time hidden among plants and decorations. There is not a maximum number of Caridina you can house in your tank, overpopulation is really difficult; they live on the ground of your aquarium, so you do not have to calculate the water mass, but the free surface where they can move; reduce their number in case you have fish swimming on the lower part of the tank, because they could be not pleased by caridina massive presence on their territory.

Even if those little shrimps are really able to hide from predators, consider no to buy them if you have big aggressive fish that could eat them easily, specially during the moult. Caridina Japonica, like other shrimps, moults to renew their shell; young shrimps moult more often, even once a week, because of their body fast growing, reaching the adulthood they moult less often, about few times a year. Maybe you could find a transparent white shell of Caridina floating in the water, that is the old moult, it does not mean your shrimp is dead. During this period, until the new shell gets hard, Caridina hide more than usual, because they are really delicate and can be eaten or injured by the other animals in the tank.

Remember, in case of water treatment with medicaments and disinfectant to take the shrimps out of the tank; even if they seem to endure some water treatment, they suffer a lot oxygen decrease.

Feeding the Amano shrimp


Caridina Japonica are known to eat algae, anyway remember they are not a solution against algae proliferation because they are too small and do not eat that much, moreover they like just some kind of algae and ignore others. The only one solution to algae problems is to control the aquarium balance: lighting period and quality, filtration work, fish and plants number.

Living on the ground, Caridina also eat the rests of the fish food, and sometimes also other organic refuses. Even if they eat algae they rarely eat plants, both living or dead; while they often like dead fish, a medium group of Caridina can clean the fish carcass really fast.

Even if they can find food almost everywhere in the tank, once a week or so, feed them with specific food or with fish pellets, some of them seem to appreciate a lot spirulina pellets.

Breeding


Breeding caridina japonica is quite easy. Sexual dimorphism is really evident: adult males reach 3cm while females are bigger and reach 5-6 cm. Females have a six – eight weeks long cycle, when they are ready to breed they produce sex pheromones, that make change the behaviour of males in the tank: you can understand that a female is ready because males start swimming almost without control around all the tank trying to find the female. Females keep eggs for five weeks and then hatches hundreds of larvae.

Larvae growing is much bigger problem in Caridina breeding because they are really small, almost invisible and eat only phytoplankton. Phytoplankton is made of small vegetable organisms present in the water, it is almost impossible to find them bottled in shops, anyway it can be naturally present in mature aquariums. The other problem with larvae is that being such small they surely end in the filter or in the mouth of fish, so the only solution is to breed in a separated tank.

You can set up a 20 litres small tank without gravel on the ground and with some hiding places, both natural or artificial; it is important not to put a filter, you can use a small oxygenator at its place. Before breeding, it is important to get the future larvae food; You have various options, anyway a good working solution is to put a small tank of water under direct sunlight outside your house, when water gets green for algae you can start breeding because this mean that water is full of phytoplankton.

Put a carrying eggs female with two or more males for some days, you should be able to see them mating, because males tend to cover the female the most of the time. When the female hatches the larvae you can take her back in the aquarium with other caridina.

From this point take some green water of the “food tank” with a syringe without needle and add it in the breeding tank. Do this daily even more times at day.

When they reach two or three weeks of age, they start to be visible and you can try to add some small quantities of spirulina powder or powered fish food. At around six week of age they do the first moult and begin to look like adult Caridina, at this point you can feed them with the same adult food as well and can decide to put them in the community tank in case there are a good number of hiding places.

As mentioned above, breeding is quite easy, problem with larvae will be surely solved with the personal experience. Bear in mind that caridina are able to breed about every two months and if kept, you probably have some females in your tank, so it gives them the chance to breed often.

Copyright note: This article is originally written by Michela Ferretti. Aqua-fish.net owns the full copyright of this article.

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Amano shrimp

has been viewed times since June 30, 2009.
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javon on: February 27, 2009, 1:47 pm wrote
I just bought an Amano shrimp and it is really cool taking care of them. All they do is exploring the bottom of the tank and they try to get a lot of the food particles from in the gravel. If you are considering getting some Amano shrimps then get them. If you need an algae eater than Amano shrimps are the shrimps for you.
Zachary on: February 28, 2009, 6:43 am wrote
I got 2 amano shrimps today, they're realy fun to watch. I'm thinking about atempting breeding them so I can have more and I'll give the rest to the local fish shop. Or maybe if I keep them in my community aquarium then maybe just 4 Or five will survive and I'll just keep those. LOL the only reason I'm writing this is because I don't have anyone to talk to right now.
Bye. Shrimps are the coolest
T on: July 23, 2009, 10:31 am wrote
I just got some of these, and they're not shy at all. As soon as I put them in they started exploring the tank. The chased the other fish away from the spot by the filter, and swim about around there, grabbing food.

The bigger fish are more scared of the shrimp, than the shrimp are of them.
They're really interesting to watch :) .
SLATE on: September 6, 2009, 2:35 am wrote
I've had 2 amano shrimp since summer of 2006. They still live!

3 years+! I almost never feed them, the tank has its own ecosystem. I do not clean it of algae until it has overgrown. They managed to find plenty of food.

Truly amazing little creatures
Odball on: September 26, 2009, 2:11 am wrote
I just bought 7, I have dropped them into my baby tank as they are all below 1.5cm at the moment. When they are a little bigger they will be moved to my 4ft tank. I have a medium/large featherfin catfish in my 4ft tank so I don't think they would live long in there. Please, if any of you have experience with amano and featherfins, please let me know how they got on. The rest of that tank are smaller tetra size. Although I have some baby sailfins which I hope will do well in there. Also have ONE large gourami.
Josh on: November 10, 2009, 3:27 am wrote
You cannot keep the larvae alive unless they are in a a 34 ppm saltwater solution, right? Brackish water is what some call it. I'm trying to breed amano shrimp and in order to keep the larvae from dying they need to be in a salt solution. Anyone know what I can do? Step by step guide. Anyone know of any books I can read about breeding these Guys?
Christian on: January 1, 2010, 12:16 am wrote
I have a pair of shrimp in my tank. They hide from everything, I'm going to put 1 more shrimp in with them.
Scott Brotherhood on: January 10, 2010, 12:46 am wrote
I just brought some of these shrimp today, they look awesome! Mine are not shy at all... like some one else posted, as soon as I added them to my community tank they we're here, there and everywhere exploring the tank! They seen healthy and happy, I brought 5 of them around 2cm big.

If you're after some good looking shrimp, that aren't shy at all... these are your best bet in my opinion :)
Mr P on: February 18, 2010, 1:06 am wrote
I am jealous, you all with confident shrimp. I bought 6 and they just hide behind the filter, so I bought 8 more to try to encourage them out. Nope nope nope.
Justin on: March 15, 2010, 7:14 am wrote
@Mr P: My shrimps hid behind the filter for 4-5 weeks but now they're fine with the other fish, in fact they will jump on food so the larger fish can't eat it.
Jayce on: May 25, 2010, 2:05 am wrote
I bought a single amano shrimp when he/she was hardly 1 cm long and he/she is a feisty one, I've actually seen him jump on my angels when they get too close to him, he's really fun to watch cause he pokes at my pleco too!
Dan on: May 27, 2010, 1:05 am wrote
I received my amano shrimp by accident. I bought two Siamese Algae Eaters and the guy at the pet store accidentally scooped up a small 1 cm shrimp. I guess he did not want to dump out the fish and start again, so he gave it to me. I figured it would be instant food for the other fish. About 5 weeks after I had put the lone shrimp in my aquarium, I was delighted to see he was still alive and had grown to nearly 2 cm. He is not shy at all and I can easily find him anytime I look into my aquarium. So it seems the shyness period is about 5 weeks as noted in some of the other posts. I plan to get more amino shrimp since they are fun to watch.
kelly on: July 26, 2010, 11:26 pm wrote
I purchased 2 shrimps about 4 months ago. They are doing great in my tank, I have them in a ten gallon with 3 thumb sized goldfish. Recently I have noticed that one of the shrimps had a sac like thing under her belly. I looked very close and seen that there were alot of tiny eggs in the sac. I would like to continue to hatch the little shrimp. But I am afraid my goldfish are going to eat them, or they are going to get taking up by the filter. It is a freshwater tank. What should I do?

Answer: If the shrimp are producing eggs then they are well settled. The problems are if any shrimp larva do hatch out the goldfish will eat them. There is also not much chance of the eggs developing as they require brackish water for the larva to survive it may be possible if the hardness of the water is high. [answered by Mick; fishtankforum.co.uk]
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