# Real or fake amano shrimp?



## asquirrel (Jun 28, 2015)

Hi folks,


I just went and bought an amano shrimp at Petco last night. I'm looking at him / her and although the shape looks right, it doesn't have any telltale markings of an amano shrimp (either black dashes along the sides or dots along the sides - even Petco's site has the right pics). This shrimp looks blank on either side. I'd say maybe he's a baby but he's pretty big. About 1/3rd bigger than my adult red cherry shrimp. If you folks could help me determine whether or not he's a real amano shrimp I'd appreciate it. Pictures are on the link below. 



If he's not an amano, I'd be open to guesses. Thanks! 



https://drive.google.com/open?id=1PfvMyAxCGdbArrFHtjqZ0zcPd-p-hP3P


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## Zoidburg (Mar 8, 2016)

It's more like we don't know either! LOL

I'm personally leaning towards an "Australian Amano" myself, aka Caridina typus sp.


You can look at some past threads for more about them. 

https://www.plantedtank.net/forums/88-shrimp-other-invertebrates/1276427-odd-amano-shrimp.html

https://www.plantedtank.net/forums/88-shrimp-other-invertebrates/1291533-what-kind-shrimp-these.html


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## EdWiser (Jul 14, 2015)

That’s a no.  
Can be hard to find the Amano shrimp that is real.


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

I bought several from Petco that look like that. One of them turned into this one that rules the tank. Pushes Amanos, RCS and other shrimp out of the way.


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## asquirrel (Jun 28, 2015)

Thanks Zoidberg!


That second thread with the shrimp looks a lot like mine. Everyone has a different opinion. Fat glass shrimp. Baby amano. Caridina sp. that are *NOT* amanos. 



Freaking Petco. I'm going to keep him anyway because frankly, bringing him back is returning him to a death camp. They had a variety of neos in a tiny box (the ones they stage the shrimp/fish in before dumping into a bag). There were 10 in there. Four were dead and nobody even pulled the bodies out after I pointed it out to the aquatic person there. Another tank had ghosts eating a pile of dead nerite snails. The amanos were in that tank clinging to a sponge filter. Not too many of them and I took the biggest one I could find in the bunch. Dude looked scared out his mind with his tank mates. Didn't leave the sponge up above and witness the carnage below with the ghosts. He's seems very active now in my tank and beginning to realize his days of suffering are over. 

BTW - thanks man for quickly answering my questions throughout the years on here. You always get me going in the right direction. Me and my aquatic friends thank you. 

Thanks folks for your responses!  Asteroid, that brown shrimp you have looks like a beast!


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## Quint (Mar 24, 2019)

Yours should darken up some and get more defined patterns if you will in a few days once it settles in. All of mine were that same color when I brought them home and within a week or so ecspecially after the first molt they looked similar to Asteroids shrimp. The racing stripe I have on a couple of them and others its broken up into a repeating arrow head pattern of sorts. They get big also compared to RCS or similar. I have a couple that are a good 2" long. They dont bug anything else in the tanks except to knock things out of the way to steal food.


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

asquirrel said:


> ... Asteroid, that brown shrimp you have looks like a beast!


Definitely is, funny to watch when i drop in a wafer and 10 or so RCS are sharing it, then "the beast" comes out from wherever she's hiding, grabs the wafer and disappears.


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## Aquatroy50 (Dec 6, 2019)

Asteroid said:


> I bought several from Petco that look like that. One of them turned into this one that rules the tank. Pushes Amanos, RCS and other shrimp out of the way.


Thats a Bamboo, not amano


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## Zoidburg (Mar 8, 2016)

Aquatroy50 said:


> Thats a Bamboo, not amano


No fans and smaller than a bamboo... "amano" sized, but "beefier"


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

Aquatroy50 said:


> Thats a Bamboo, not amano


Does kinda look like a Bamboo from the top, but as @Zoidburg pointed out no fans.


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## Quint (Mar 24, 2019)

Aquatroy50 said:


> Thats a Bamboo, not amano


They do have very similar coloring especially right after molting. Here are a few pictures of some of mine that I have posted before. 










This one is next to a wild type neo


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## aquapadawan (Dec 5, 2019)

yeah that is some weird coloration! Mine are just gray with the dark dashes but other than that looks the same


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## Zoidburg (Mar 8, 2016)

aquapadawan said:


> yeah that is some weird coloration! Mine are just gray with the dark dashes but other than that looks the same



Here's one photo I've taken that is a good comparison of a false amano (C. typus???) with actual amanos (C. multidentata)


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## gadawg999 (Jul 12, 2019)

I picked up three shrimp at Petco that were labeled as Amanos. Two of them looked like your pictures and I think they are Australian Amanos. They looked like this at first:








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They eventually got a lot darker and looked like this:



I think the third one was a short nosed shrimp:



The short nosed shrimp was a much better algae eater than the Australian Amanos. Unfortunately, it disappeared without a trace a few weeks after I got it. It was in a tank with a betta and every time the fish got near it, it shot across the tank like it was spring loaded. A few times it shot up and got stuck on the glass above the water. After it disappeared I had to replace it with a real Amano from a better fish store because the Australian Amanos were pretty lazy when it came to eating algae. The real Amano cleaned things up pretty quickly and all have been doing well for about 4 months now.


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## RobVA (Feb 1, 2020)

Sounds like my experience with the Petco amanos. They look like amanos but no markings. They’ve been decent with algae clean up but they also seem to be eating the manzanita driftwood.


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## vividjs24 (Feb 25, 2021)

Asteroid said:


> I bought several from Petco that look like that. One of them turned into this one that rules the tank. Pushes Amanos, RCS and other shrimp out of the way.


This is an amano shrimp. It’s actually an Australian amano!


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

vividjs24 said:


> This is an amano shrimp. It’s actually an Australian amano!



Well when I say Amano, I'm referring to the one native to Japan and obviously named after T. Amano not one down under.


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## MissCris (Mar 7, 2016)

vividjs24 said:


> This is an amano shrimp. It’s actually an Australian amano!


I picked up five "amanos" at Petco last week, and it wasn't until I got them home that I realized four of them were way too brownish for C. multidentata (looks to be the Australian C. typus, and I'm not pleased), and the fifth was a black rili cherry shrimp that the guy netted by mistake (that one is fine actually, because I got a $8 shrimp for $4).

I understand that they are "Australian Amanos", so I guess calling them amano shrimp isn't technically lying, but pretty much anyone looking for an amano shrimp is looking for the Japanese kind. Not to mention that since breeding them in captivity is a huge PITA, I imagine many are wild caught, and it takes a serious leap to confuse Australia and Japan.


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## Zoidburg (Mar 8, 2016)

Due to the strict import and export laws of Australia... I really wonder if they are indeed Australian Amano Shrimp...

They certainly look it!


But maybe they're from Sri Lanka? Seychelles? Mascarene Islands? Philippines? Taiwan? Sulawesi? West Papua?



They could indeed be C. typus.... just not necessarily from Australia....









The complex evolutionary history and phylogeography of Caridina typus (Crustacea: Decapoda): long-distance dispersal and cryptic allopatric species


The evolutionary history of the old, diverse freshwater shrimp genus Caridina is still poorly understood, despite its vast distribution – from Africa to Polynesia. Here, we used nuclear and mitochondrial DNA to infer the phylogeographic and evolutionary history of C. typus, which is one of only...




www.nature.com




.


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## vividjs24 (Feb 25, 2021)

MissCris said:


> I picked up five "amanos" at Petco last week, and it wasn't until I got them home that I realized four of them were way too brownish for C. multidentata (looks to be the Australian C. typus, and I'm not pleased), and the fifth was a black rili cherry shrimp that the guy netted by mistake (that one is fine actually, because I got a $8 shrimp for $4).
> 
> I understand that they are "Australian Amanos", so I guess calling them amano shrimp isn't technically lying, but pretty much anyone looking for an amano shrimp is looking for the Japanese kind. Not to mention that since breeding them in captivity is a huge PITA, I imagine many are wild caught, and it takes a serious leap to confuse Australia and Japan.


Why wouldn't you want the Australian ones? They're SUPER hard to find...


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## MissCris (Mar 7, 2016)

vividjs24 said:


> Why wouldn't you want the Australian ones? They're SUPER hard to find...


Because they aren't what I wanted for the tank, and they are more interested in eating the driftwood and fish food than the algae (I actually watched one last night pull up and discard a clump of BBA to get to the soft wood beneath). They are already bigger than all of the fish in my 20g nano setup, and they're starting to steal from my cories. I was looking for a specific species, and it's partly my fault for not examining the bag more closely, but I wasn't aware until I got home that there was more than one type of amano in the aquarium trade.

When they get a little bigger so as to be safe from the betta, I'll move them to my 30g low-tech where I don't really ever have algae issues and they can help keep fish food from accumulating between the cryptocoryne (and of course I will still feed them too, because I will care for any pets I have), and I'll buy myself a group of real Japanese amanos from the LFS for my 20g high-tech, because those are what I want for my setup.

It would seem, however, that they aren't _that_ hard to find if one has a Petco, as apparently their distributor has started shipping them in place of c. multidentata. 

I do sort of feel like this is the crustacean equivalent of marking flying fox fish as SAE though.


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

I actually found one eating a perfectly healthy RCS recently. During a feeding it became a "little excited" and grabbed the RCS and ate it while it was alive.


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## MissCris (Mar 7, 2016)

Asteroid said:


> I actually found one eating a perfectly healthy RCS recently. During a feeding it became a "little excited" and grabbed the RCS and ate it while it was alive.


All the more reason to move those guys to a tank where they aren't the biggest creatures in the aquarium. The only things in my 20g that matches them for size are the otos.


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