Who Keeps Amanos?

I also keep Amanos and have found them to be very hardy. They also don’t require much care as such. I only rarely feed mine algae wafers, the rest of the time they are left to scavenge. Sounds like yours at living a life of luxury

I must admit I’ve never attempted to properly sex mine given they cannot successfully breed in freshwater but I believe the easiest way has something to do with the pattern of lines or dots down their flanks.

Be careful of their climbing ability, they can climb up the silicone in the corners for example and will walk quite some distance out of water. It is very strange when used to fish being incapacitated out of water to see an amano apparently unphased walking up the handle of the net towards you.

That’s it @Sue thanks, you’ve saved me the job of looking that up 

I had amanos several years ago. The ones that carried eggs all had dashes down their sides while the ones that never carried eggs had dots down their sides. The dashes were also bigger than the dots. The shrimps that is, not the markings.

The females were almost constantly berried though of course I never saw baby shrimps.

Hi @Sue

Thanks for the feedback.

Dots and dashes - takes me back to my radio ham days with Morse code! I will use your comments to help me sex them tomorrow. I am aware that there cannot be any successful offspring in freshwater. But I'd just be interested in knowing whether I have boys or girls or both.

JPC

From what I understand amanos will eat unhealthy/dieing BBA e.g. if it has be treated with gluteraldehude they will eat the remains

They sound great. If I didn't get the heebie-jeebies at the thought of seeing them scavenging on a fish corpse, or finding a partial fish corpse semi-consumed by shrimp, [ ] they'd be a great asset.

They don't count towards your stock level on the CC.

I've got about 9 Amano shrimp in my tank, and they're great characters. They shuffle around alongside the corys at feeding time and will always try to steal the whole wafer if they can get near enough. They're also great at blending in, or hiding in darker corners - there are many times when, on a quick pass, the tank can look almost empty and then after looking closer, you can spot four or five of them on a single piece of wood at the same time.

It's a little unnerving to find their shed skins on occasion, there's always the worry that one of them has passed on, but I've never found them eating a dead fish, either.

I do like the sound of a “clean up crew” however daft question but do you count them as to would fish stock? Which i guess the same question could be asked for Snails (but this isn’t the correct thread so feel free to ignore that cheeky add on) 

Hi @LeakysLab

As you suggested, why not put your question at:

https://forums.thinkfish.co.uk/invertebrates-shrimps-and-snails/

JPC