Amano Shrimp Have Bred- Help!

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Sooooo.......
 
It has been a pretty manic day today.
 
About 3pm, i was talking on the phone chatting to my mum while looking at my 9gal shrimp/snail tank, when all of a sudden i see these tiny little things swimming about everywhere!!
I thought, "WTF are they?!", so i looked really close. My first thought was "Shrimp fry!" but then i thought "But no, Amano Shrimp don't just accidentally breed in aquariums- i've never heard of it happening, even people who set out to breed them usually fail!". So then i started wondering if some sort of weird pond critter had laid eggs in my tank and i was now looking at some very strange larvae of some sort. But i've had an almost enture lifetimes experience with ponds & their critters and i'd never seen anything like these things before.
Soooo....I looked up pictures of newly hatched Amano Shrimp larvae, and yep, these critters are definitely baby Amano Shrimp!
 
I'm still pretty freaked out.
I just rushed down to a fish shop after doing a super-quick read up on raising Amano Shrimp fry. I've bought some marine salt to make the water brackish and some packets of fresh algae, shrimp granules & liquifry to feed the baby shrimps. Ahhh this is so much to take in!!!
 
I read this page on raising baby Amano Shrimps;
 
http/www.shrimpnow.com/content.php/129-Amano-Yamato-Shrimp-Breeding
 
Quick questions i need to know;
 
1. Do i have to remove the adult shrimp- they won't eat the larvae will they?
2. Can Apple Snails tolerate brackish water?
3. Should i put some fine fabric around the filter intakes (to stop the fry getting sucked in)?
4. Is the info in the above link good/correct?
5. Any advice? Help!
 
Background: I've kept Amano Shrimp for donkeys years. Females often carry eggs, the eggs come & go- i never really paid much attention to it as i was always told that the chances of Amano Shrimp in the aquarium was remote/very difficult.
The tank in question is 9/10 UK gallons, has 2 small filters, heater, lighting, some live planting, a large house ornement (that the shrimp like living in) and a shallow sand substrate.
The inhabitants of the tank are 3 fully grown Apple Snails & 7 Amano Shrimp and a couple of trumpet snails (and some tiny unidentified snails). There are no fish in the tank.
I had the water level pretty low recently as the Apple Snails have been laying eggs a lot recently (and find it easier to plaster their eggs onto the glass when the water level is lower, otherwise the eggs just slide off the glass and mess up the water quality), but i missed a couple of weeks water changes (very busy) and over the last few days i have been doing a small water change everyday (about 2 liters, partly to make up for the lost water change and partly just for the hell of it).
 
And now this!
 
I just so happen to be going to Scotland in 2 days for about 5days and the next door neighbours (who lack fish experience but have so far been great at looking after my fish on previous holidays- i just leave measured lots of food out to drop into the day twice a day) will be looking after my fish. So if you can help me give any instructions that would be super-simple for them to follow while i'm away, that would super-awesome 

  .
 
(Lol all this was totally unplanned but now the baby shrimp are here i really want to save them & make this work

  !)
 
 

 

[DrRob]

1) I believe is a yes.
 
2) No, not really
 
3) Yes
 
4) Never bothered to do it, but it seems a reasonable method.
 
5) This will only really work with a fairly strong salt mix, as you've read, so any plants, your biofilter and probably all your algae will die. This will likely kill the larvae. You'd be better either waiting for the next batch and trying with them and a proper set up or syphoning the larvae out into a proper tank for this purpose.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Thanks for the reply!
 
Concerning no.5, what is the bare minimum amount of salt you would say these shrimp need to survive? Is it possible to have the biofilter survive small brackish conditions? At what salt point would you need to change to a marine set up? I don't have the money (or space) to set up even a smal marine tank, but i would like to give these little shrimp a chance of survival if i can

.

 

[Getthejist]

From what I've read people let algae grow in the aquarium and largely leave that up to "filtering" the water that and water changes I guess. At least until they are bigger.

 

[Baccus]

From what I have read on breeding amano shrimp (or any shrimp that requires brackish) the best bet is to remove the larva into their own tank and use a small air driven filter if anything. Although any filter has the strong chance of sucking up the young. An airstone would probably be advisable to keep the water moving so that particles that the larva might eat stays suspended. I don't know if the larva of shrimp will feed stationary eg from places on the glass or floor of the tank, or if they are more like brine shrimp needing to keep moving and filtering their food.
The hardest part of raising the larva is actually getting the mix of brackish correct and then as the larva develop gradually turning it back to fresh at the right stages and quantities as the larva develop into shrimp.
Then comes the food, usually green water is suggested as the best food. You can make green water (although its not generally considered now days the best form of it) from adding blanched lettuce leaves to water and letting the leaves basically get broken down by naturally occurring bacteria etc in the water. If doing this just make sure the water is out in the sunlight or in a well lit area to promote the floating algea growth.
 
Since your going away, I would let this batch of babies go. Or if anything see about raising the gH in your tank in the hope that water hardness will compensate for brackish. A possible food source to add to the tank while away is nori sheets (the kelp/ seaweed wrap that goes around sushi rolls), shrimp love the stuff and I often wonder if it has a high salt content as well. I would only part a 1/4 of a sheet in the tank and only put more in once the shrimp have eaten the entire lot. There is a also a similar product made especially for Marine tanks but I don't know its name or how readily available it is.
Then when you return I would set up a tank as the thread you found suggested and try raising some larva when you have the time to really paly around with all their requirements.
 
Oh and if you should by chance raise some larva in the fresh ( it has been done with certain Australian species that also require brackish), there is a good chance that the offspring will be more likely to successfully breed and raise young in fresh/ fresher water.
And last tip, I know of, people that have raised difficult shrimp in the past say having the mulm/ detris/ gunk that we usually remove from tanks being left in the tank helps the difficult species of shrimp (even fish) to survive. I guess because the mulm will hold lots of micro foods that the shrimp needed, instead of it all being whisked away and poured down the sink or on the garden.

 

[Getthejist]

Some people say that they have raised amanos in fresh water, but they never document it so it's hard to say if it's true or not.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Thankyou for the replies so far!
 
Although i spent hours yesterday scooping up the shrimp fry, i found more of them this morning- here's some pics;
 



(^ yes that filter in the background is upside down lol)
 
What i have observed about them so far;
 
1. They are the tiniest baby-anythings i have ever seen. I thought danio fry were tiny, but these shrimp fry (shrimplets? Shrimp larvae? Baby shrimp? Whatever you call them) are something else! They would make even a newborn guppy appear large- no matter how close you get to them it is difficult to observe the detail on them even in plain view (i had to use the super macro mode on my camera to take these pics, which was challenging as there is no flash using such a mode and as the fry move around their images blur easily in the pics).
2. They are free swimming- unlike the adult shrimp which spend most of their time crawling around on things (and only occasionally swimming), these shrimp fry seem to spend all their time floating around (occasionally they jolt forward a few millimetres but that's about it).
3. They are definitely very photosensitive/attracted to light.
 
What i have learnt so far;
 
1. They have numerous different larval stages, and if they survive, they will take about a month (or just over a month) before they actually start to look like baby shrimp. After about 4 days they should apparently look more curly, but if they are unchanged after a week then their chances of developing further are slim (and they will probably only last another week).
2. Its when they start to look like shrimplets that you have to start reverting the tank back to freshwater.
3. Nobody seems entirely sure how brackish the water should be for Amano shrimplets, but more certain is that the adults can apparently easily live in brackish water. Diverse sources of information on raising the fry is rather lacking
4. Its generally recommended to feed the fry a mixture of algae & higher protein foods (although Amano Shrimp eat a lot of algae they don't live solely off the stuff and so the general philosophy is that the fry/shrimplets will probably grow better if more than algae is fed to them).
5. However info on how often they should be fed (and how much) is very lacking.
 
What i have done so far;
 
1. I found an old livebearer fry net cage whose netting is incredibly fine and which seems just about fine enough to keep the shrimp fry in. So what i have done is suspended the net in the tank and put as many of the shrimp fry as i could find in the net.
2. I've been gradually raising the saltiness of the tank over the last 16 hours. My aim is to get it to about 23/24 grams per liter by tomorrow- so far i'm just under half way there. Although the tank is 9 UK gallons, using much more precise mathematics (i.e. including the amount of sand/decorations, the fact the tank isn't filled right up to the top etc) the tank currently contains precisely 7 UK gallons of water (which i may increase a bit).
3. Food: Yesterday i bought some Liquisel (for egg laying fish fry) & "TetraNatura Algae Mix"- this algae mix comes in little sachets and is fresh/raw (not dried) Nori algae (it looks like green lumpy paste). Yesterday i just mixed in about 10 small drops of liquisel into the fry net, but today i got a small cup, put a few tablespoons of water from the tank into it, and mixed in one sachet of the algae mix & 10 drops of liquisel. I then emptied about half this solution into the shrimp net, sieving it through a small fine fish net as i did so (to stop the larger lumps of algae going into the net).
 
My concerns so far;
 
1. Over-feeding & water quality problems: The main reason why i have put the shrimp fry suspended in a fine fish fry net cage in the tank is because the tank has 2 small mature filters (and by keeping them in the same water, i won't have to put these delicate hatchlings through any harsh acclimatisation processes). Feeding any tiny baby aquatic animals is a messy job, and if adult Amano Shrimps sensitivity to water quality conditions is anything to go by, then these baby Amano shrimp will surely be even more sensitive.
(^ I can just imagine putting them in a tub or small tank with a weak bubble stone and the water quality being fouled by the food and the shrimplets dying off in a matter of days).
 
Because nobody seems certain on how much or how often these shrimp fry should be fed (even what exactly they should be fed is debatable), over-feeding & water quality problems is even more of a concern. I have about 10 years of experience keeping fish and raising fry (over the years i've raised a variety of Livebearer fry as well as Pearl Danio fry & Albino Cory fry) and i am very intune with reading/looking out for the signs of over-feeding & water quality problems (TBH i am so in tune/experienced with these things i've probably only tested for water quality a handful of times over the last couple of years), however, i will be leaving for Scotland tomorrow (early afternoon) and my non-experienced neighbours will then be in charge of my fish tanks (including the shrimp tank).
 
So water quality problems are the only real risk i see so far- i'm prepared to lose the Amano shrimp fry as i've read that even when raised by experienced/knowledgable people the entire batch of shrimp fry has at best only a 1 in 4 chance of surviving. But my adult Amano shrimps? I'm very attached to them and would be gutted to loose them (some of them are likely 5-7+ years old now). Out of my other 3 tanks (30gal, 100gal & 150gal) only the 150gal tank is suitable for Amano shrimps (both the 30gal & 100gal tanks currently have fish that would likely eat such small shrimp (or at best harrass them greatly)) but i'm very reluctant to put them in the 150gal as it is pretty planted and i know if i put the shrimp in there i will basically say goodbye to ever retrieving them for good (originally they were in the 30 gal tank and i had to take out every last thing in it and lower the water level by half just to catch them). The problem with this is that if i ever needed to medicate the tank for parasites, the shrimps would be definitely killed by any such meds used to treat fish parasites.
(^ Also they love the small tank (certainly enough to reproduce in it) and if i leave them in there then they won't have to go through the stress of acclimatisation and suddenly having to adapt to a much bigger & more active community tank etc)
 
2. Before i started making the tank more brackish, i removed the Apple Snails to another tank (where they are doing fine).
 
3. As stated before, i'll be going to Scotland tomorrow for a short getaway (my birthday is on the 2nd and i'll also be catching up with friends/family and doing lots of chilling out in general). I'll be gone for 6 days in total but only 5 of those days will be full days. I will however try to stay connected to the internet during this time. If the neighbours can get the shrimp fry through my leave without killing anything or letting any disasters etc develop, then i think i can do this.
 
Sooo....My mission so far;
 
Objective no.1: Leave fool proof/intructions for the neighbours to help advoid any fish/shrimp disasters.
Objective no.2: Give baby Amano shrimp a chance of survival (< very much underline "chance" as i think that is the best i can do).
Objective no.3: Learn as much as possible from this unexpected experience. Observe all the details that led to the shrimp breeding, and if this first time at raising shrimp fry is unsuccessful, then try to breed the shrimp again in the future and become more successful at raising the babies.
 
The reason why i have become so interested in Objective no.3 (this is no longer now just about me dealing with an unexpected batch of Amano shrimp fry, but now that i know that it is possible in my tanks, i am actually wanting to breed these lovable critters successfully) is because it is a fact that most Amano shrimps sold in the aquarium trade are wild caught (even to this day) and that this is obviously an environmental problem. IMO if more people became successful at breeding these critters in captivity, then that would reduce the demand on wild Amano shrimp populations.
 
Edit: spelling.

 

[Baccus]

Good for you for wanting to help possibly slow down the wild caught trade in shrimp and even better that you are keeping us all updated on your attempts and experiences. I did think of another couple of maybe suitable food for your shrimp larva. One would be the powder foods designed for feeding/ raising brine shrimp or even the powder for feeding corals. Another option which I am sure you know about and it does tend to play havoc with water quality is boiled egg yolk crumbled up.
 
I know I did read some where about raising amanos in aquariums and I will try to refind it and put a link here for you. You may have already found them but it cant hurt to have some more information all in one spot.
 
http/www.planetinverts.com/Amano%20Shrimp.html

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

When i get back from Scotland i will definitely try out more complex feeding methods (if the baby shrimp are still alive of course lol)

. These are the intructions i've left the neighbours for while i'm away;
 
Hi there v .

Feeding instructions for the baby shrimp (which are in the net suspended in the tank);

1. Put 4 tablespoons of water from the tank into the little pot.
2. Empty one of the sachets of algae mix into the pot.
3. Put 10 drops of the Liquisel (little white bottle) into the pot.
4. Stir ingredients together.
5. Empty one third of the solution into the baby shrimp net, using the small fish net as a sieve (to prevent the larger lumps in the solution going in).
6. Gently stir the food solution up a little bit in the baby shrimp net so that it distributes more evenly.

At the end of the day add half of what is left of the solution to the baby shrimp net (using the small fish net as a sieve again). You can add the leftover solution to one of the big tanks downstairs.


A note on water quality;

This is my first time raising baby shrimp and as feeding any tiny aquatic animals is always a messy business, it is a good idea to keep an eye on water quality.
Some things to keep an eye on;

1. Smelly water: The water if clean should smell pretty neutral, but if there is excess nutrients fouling the water then it will smell bad.
2. Uneaten food in the tank: When algae wafers (those dried bits the adult shrimp eat) are uneaten, they disintegrate into a greenish mess at the bottom of the tank.
3. Shrimp not looking well: Healthy Amano Shrimp should be translucent and partake in normal behaviours like crawling around the place, sheltering in their house and cleaning things. Unhappy Amano Shrimp (particularly those affected by poor water quality) may turn pinkish (dead shrimp turn fully pink), hang around the surface a lot & avoid food.
4. Cloudy/milky water: Excess nutrients in the tank can lead to bacterial blooms which turn the water cloudy/milky.

If you notice any of these problems occuring, immediately stop feeding the shrimp (both adults & babies)- the shrimp can last days without food but they cannot survive poor water quality conditions (and adding more food to the tank will only worsen them). If very poor water quality conditions occur that actually jeopardise the lives of the shrimp (for example the shrimp are turning pink & dying) please call me on:                     .

PS: Occasionally the shrimp molt and leave exoskeletons lying around the tank- you can tell if it is an exoskeleton or a dead shrimp because dead Amano Shrimp appear very solid (but their exoskeletons appear very see-through).

Thank you so much for looking after my fish & shrimp v !
 
 
 
I have read SOOO much conflicting info on raising baby Amano shrimp over the last couple of days though....
 
My main concerns at the moment;
 
1. I read up on keeping adult Amano shrimp in brackish conditions (as the adults are still in the tank). The general overview i've gotten is that they can live in brackish conditions for a while but they don't seem thrive in heavy brackish conditions (the general report is that they don't seem as active when kept in such conditions).
2. Some people recommend brackish conditions for the fry, some people marine. It seems to be about 60% recommending brackish and 40% recommending mairne. But there's a big difference between brackish & marine (and a lot of variations inbetween)...
 
What i've read about Amano Shrimp's natural habitats is that they live in marshes (Amano Shrimp are also known as the "Japanese Marsh Shrimp") whose waters range from freshwater to "mildly brackish" and that the temperature ranges range from tropical to subtropical conditions.
 
http/www.aquamoss.net/Articles/Yamato-Shrimp-And-Aquatic-Moss.htm
 
Although they live in a few different countries, in Japan apparently they primarily exist in the Yamato river (although i can't seem to find where that is on Google Maps).
 
Do the shrimp fry really get washed into the sea?
Or do they simply float to the more brackish end of the river?
Looking at these little baby shrimps, they don't look like strong swimmers or creatures in general that would stance any chance of survival in the big wide ocean...But on the other hand, is that why the adult shrimp create them in such large numbers? Apparently there is usually 1000 shrimp fry a batch (and that's quite a lot for the female of any species to produce). Amano Shrimp seem to prefer quantity over quality (are the poor survival rates that even successful breeders are reporting everywhere normal? It seems like we don't even know what is a good success rate).
 
But what i've seen recommended for the brackish side of rearing the fry, seems to be quite strong brackish water. I read this interesting article on salinity levels in natural habitats;
 
http/www.danireef.com/2012/03/27/the-truth-about-salinity-in-aquarium/
 
^ It seems like the 35% everyone seems to recommend for marine, in natural habitats is actually very high. And that makes the 25 grams of marine salt per liter seem even higher. That's surely quite a bit above 15% (sorry i am new to the saltier side)? 
So i haven't added the very last of the salt solution. In fact, i think i might actually reduce the salinity a bit now (and why not? Hmm... Perhaps the practically marine levels of salt people have been recommending for Amano Shrimp fry aren't actually right. Afterall, it seems most people giving out the advice are only going by what they've picked up elsewhere on the internet. There doesn't seem much certainty on anything).

 

[frothhelmet]

From what I understand it is extremely labour intensive and difficult to raise true amanos. Few aquarists succeed. Also the consensus is that 'Amanos' which have been raised completely in freshwater are lookalike species that are not true amanos. That doesn't mean that such shrimp arent great shrimp. It's just that they are not the same as Caridina Japonica. Best of luck!

 

[anylower]

Hi,
    Just read about your amano fry's, how are they doing?
I know the survival rate is very low; did you manage to get the water sorted?
 
Regards