Amano Shrimp Species Overview
If there was an award for ‘Hardest Working Shrimp in Aquaria Today,’ it would have to be handed straight to the Amano variety. They also happen to be pretty cute to look at too.
Initially hailing as an import from Japan, these plain-looking little crustaceans belie their usefulness and have an incessant industrious nature. So far, so good.
The original Amano Shrimp were found in the 1980s on the Bonin Islands of Japan as well as the mainland but are also found in Taiwan, Fiji, and the Ryukyu Islands near the Philippines. They are freshwater shrimp and inhabit streams and rivers.
They were a great discovery, too, it turns out. Hardly any hobbyist today can say they have never had or not wanted to have one of these little guys in their tank.
The reason why? They never stop grazing on algae, fish waste, decaying plant life, or uneaten fish food. They then neatly repackage all of these waste materials that would otherwise clutter your tank and downgrade your tank condition rapidly into shrimp waste, much like a trash compactor.
How neat is that? So neat that their waste is easily sieved from the water during changes.
We’ll have a look at the wonder that is Amano Shrimp in greater detail and why they are a no-brainer for just about every tank.
Amano Shrimp Behavior
We’ll start by discussing their behavior by mentioning that these shrimp should behave relentlessly, as in we do mean they never stop working away at the rubbish in your tank. If you have a shrimp that was sold to you as an Amano Shrimp, and it sits about doing very little, chances are you were sold a lookalike.
And apparently, there are quite a few who look like Amano Shrimp but who are not and are a different species that behave rather differently. Some might even say lazy!
If your ‘Amano Shrimp’ purchase isn’t hyperactively working away in your tank, it either isn’t authentic, or its health is extremely poor.
They are peaceful and easygoing shrimp and are one of the most popular because of how much debris they hoover up for you.
If you have more than one, there will be dominance by size, and on the arrival of food, their behavior can be on the fractious side of things as they all charge for their portion. The biggest will get priority, and so on down the order.
Beyond that, it’s a nonstop mission to forage for whatever else they can eat, and they will dutifully go about their day digging into the substrate and nibbling on plant parts that are decaying.
Amano Shrimp also molt monthly, so you can expect to see exoskeletons on the bottom, but they too will not last long.
They are social crustaceans and prefer to live in troupes like they do in the wild. It should be emphasized that they do truly need to be in a group, a minimum of 5 or 6, more if you can. Below that minimum, they will not fare well and will not be happy to be in your tank.
We think all hobbyists should want happy campers in their tanks, so please do consider this carefully and optimize their social scenario.
Amano Shrimp Lifespan
A typical Amano Shrimp can live for 2 to 3 years, and occasionally longer. That’s a lot of cleaning for your tank at very little cost!
Again, larger troupes are happier and healthier with their social setup, and if kept in an ideal 1:1 ratio of males to females, you should reach a lengthier lifespan.
Amano Shrimp Appearance
Amano Shrimp are pretty plain looking, with translucent bodies not unlike the Ghost Shrimp, but they still have an attractive or cute quality about them that makes them fun to observe.
Normally growing up to 2 inches in length as adults, they can be tricky to see in the tank with their transparent, colorless appearance. Their tails are completely colorless too.
There should be a reddish-brown broken line along their length, similar to a row of dashes, accompanied by blue-grey dots. A white dorsal stripe runs the entire length, and they always have black eyes.
Females are generally larger than males, and to tell them apart, you need to look at the row of dots that run along the length of the body. The ‘dots’ on females look more like messy dashes, and on males, they are round and properly circular.
Habitat And Tank Requirements
These shrimp will want a well-cycled tank to start with, so ensure you have enough debris and algae for them to thrive from the get-go. A new tank will not go over well and can even cause stress to your new troupe.
Being small, they need plenty of places to hide, especially when vulnerable after molting, and for their security on a regular basis.
We’ll take a look at the tank parameters you should be aiming for to have a happy troupe of Amano Shrimp.
Tank Conditions
Being freshwater shrimp and native to streams and rivers, these shrimp are used to a decent flow rate of water and need a lot of oxygenation for their tank set up.
Being tiny, they do best with a sponge filter or hang-on-back filtration and added air stones for airflow. If you have a hang-on-back filter, make sure you at least have a sponge sleeve over the intake, so these little shrimp don’t get sucked in and perish.
Shrimp also love to hang around the sponge and eat up all the gunk that collects around it, so it adds to their enjoyment of eating all things all the time.
Sandy substrate with fine gravel works best, and you will require abundant plant life, caves, and other nooks and crannies for these little guys to hide in. Shrimp tubes can also be useful to include.
Small, smooth rocks and pebbles recreate a more realistic riverbed environment, and small wooden branches are also useful.
Standard community tank lighting is fine for these shrimp, and full-spectrum is ideal to encourage plant and algae growth for them to feed.
It’s worth mentioning here that even though they clean up debris and keep your tank meticulously clean, these shrimp are not processors of nitrates!
So even though your tank looks clean, regular water changes are still required to keep nitrate levels down as this will impact their health and wellbeing, not to mention that of your other fish.
Water conditions should be noted and maintained as follows:
- pH of 6.0-7.0
- Water hardness between 6-8 dKH
- Temperature between 70-80 ºF (21-26.5ºC)
Tank Size
The absolute minimum tank size needed for a single Amano Shrimp is 10 gallons (38L). However, knowing that you should never ideally keep any solo, you can have up to 5 in this sized tank. (This does not mean a single one can survive in 2 gallons, however.)
Beyond those numbers, every additional 2 gallons will allow for another Amano Shrimp to join the troupe.
Choosing Tank Mates For Amano Shrimp
Being peaceful and social within themselves, Amano Shrimp make ideal additions to just about any tank but taking care of fish size is essential. When in doubt, if they are likely to fit within a larger fish’s mouth, then they should be avoided.
Keeping Amano Shrimp alongside similarly-sized companion fish would be ideal, and easygoing species are the order of the day. You definitely do not want an aggressive fish or large species mingling with your shrimp, or they are unlikely to last long.
Some excellent fish tank mate pairings for Amano Shrimp are:
- Other Shrimp varieties such as Vampire, Singapore Flower, Cherry, Ghost, and Bamboo
- Snails such as Mystery, Nerve, Sulawesi, Golden Inca, Ivory, Japanese Trapdoor, Assassin, Ramshorn, and Malaysian Trumpet
- Otocinclus Catfish and Asian Stone Catfish
- Bolivian or Blue Rams
- Guppies
- Black Neons
- Lemon Tetras
- Danios
- Tiger Barbs
Fish you should avoid keeping with your Amano Shrimp include:
- Goldfish
- Cichlids
- Crayfish
- Oscars
- Bettas
- Gourami
- Large Plecos
Common Health Issues Of Amano Shrimp
The great thing about Amano Shrimp is that they are relatively hardy creatures inherently.
In general, these shrimp are not particularly susceptible to many ailments that are usually quite common for other freshwater species.
Being crustaceans, they can be infiltrated by Planarian Worms or get a fungal infection, but these conditions are relatively rare.
A bigger concern can be a shortened lifespan due to not enough food! They need enough plant matter and protein, but being voracious eaters keeping up their supply can sometimes be tricky.
Keeping an eye on their activity levels should tell you if they are feeling healthy, and if necessary, you should supplement their diet to ensure everyone is getting enough in your troupes pecking order.
The other complaint is that they can have issues with CO2 due to the amount of plant life needed in the tank for their optimum environment. Live plants will take in a lot of CO2, and this can lower the pH of your tank, which Amano shrimp may find problematic.
Breeding Amano Shrimp
Well, don’t have your heart set on breeding Amano shrimp anytime soon. It’s another one of those species where it’s virtually unheard of to have them reproduce in captivity.
This is not because of size or inability to reach sexual maturity in a tank issue. Rather, this is because of the specialized water conditions needed to allow nature to take its course.
A key point to note here is that as a result of this, almost all Amano Shrimp acquired and imported for hobbyists are, in fact, wild-caught Amano Shrimp.
When purchasing these shrimp, they are usually juveniles and normally about one inch in size or half of their adult, fully grown stature.
The main reason they are usually wild-caught to purchase is how they breed.
While adults are exclusively freshwater, larvae are not.
Males must fertilize the eggs, which the female will carry around for about six weeks. Using her tail, she oxygenates the eggs until she releases the eggs/larvae, which travel downstream in the wild into brackish waters (slightly saline).
Here they will hatch as free-swimming larvae and continue with the river current into the sea, and they require saltwater to grow into shrimplets. These juveniles then migrate back upstream to the freshwater they require to grow into full adults and live out their life cycle.
Attempting to recreate these breeding conditions should really only be attempted by an expert aquarist, and even then, success rates are minimal at best.
We can chalk this up to Mother Nature’s decision!
If you really want to breed invertebrates like shrimp, you are better off trying with Ghost or Cherry Shrimp, both of whom are excellent tank mates to the Amano, so try working with those instead.
Conclusion
So are Amano Shrimp going to make the grade and be a part of your tank community?
If the size and aggression levels of your other fish permit, they definitely should be!
These natural tank sweeper-uppers are not only a lovely living tank cleaner to incorporate into your community, but their social interactions make for some entertaining viewing.
They are fun to watch, haggling over food, clambering over things, and observing molting if they aren’t too shy.
Sometimes it’s a case of Where’s Wally trying to spot them due to their lack of coloring and tendency to blend into their surroundings, but they reward you in so many ways from a practical fishkeeping perspective that it’s hard to fault them for that alone.
They are well worth the affordable investment and are a nice addition in every which way.
