# Amano shrimp predators



## Talonstorm (Nov 6, 2004)

It happened again!! I came home and the female is munching on another guppy fry. They are 1/2" plus in length! I am very upset, I think I am going to begin catching them to transfer to my 29 gallon.


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## Momotaro (Feb 21, 2003)

That is nuts!

I have never heard of such a thing! Anyone else experience this????

Mike


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## motard (Jan 16, 2005)

Talonstorm said:


> I had to transfer about 20 guppy fry (about 1/2" or a little larger) to my ten gallon tank yesterday due to a blessed event (blue ram fry). :wink: Within 30 seconds of putting the fry into this tank (which is very heavily planted with narrow leaf java fern on driftwood and java moss), I watched one of my large female amano shrimp swim up to a fry and capture it. She held it in her swimmerettes (where her eggs are) until it stopped struggling and ate it.  I had heard of a few cases where people thought they captured and ate fish, but were not sure, I am sure, I witnessed it! I feed my shrimp quite well, so I am not really sure what to do. All my female amanos are approximately 2.5 inches in length (quite large!), should I be concerned about this happening again? The guppy fry I moved into this tank are fry I do NOT want to lose, they are from a show strain red, and since they were born, I lost both parents. Maybe I should catch the shrimp and place them into my community tank with the rest of my shrimp. They are going to be very hard to capture though! Any advice?
> 
> Thanks,
> Tina



you sure you have amanos? 2.5 inches for an amano is pretty big. 

do they have pincers?


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## Timeout (Jul 29, 2005)

motard said:


> you sure you have amanos? 2.5 inches for an amano is pretty big.
> 
> do they have pincers?


I was going to ask the same thing and ask if you have any pictures, Tina. Your "amano" sounds more like it might be some sort of Macrobrachium species.


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## Talonstorm (Nov 6, 2004)

I am 100% sure they are amanos. To see a picture, go to Pictures of my shrimp. I will try to take some new pictures tonight, as I think the picture on the website is a male.

I have had these shrimp a long time, some about a year and a half. After looking at them last night, the largest females are actually only about 2 inches in length (that is what happens when you guess their size at work), the males are only about 1 - 1.25 inches in length. My females are very large though. I don't know anyone else local to me with shrimp in their freshwater tank, so I can't say whether mine are the largest I have seen or not. I will say that I have never seen them this large at the local LFS, but I suspect they come in at a juvenile size there. I should have taken a picture of her with the guppy fry. 

What I ended up doing was removing all the plants from the tank with the problem shrimp, catching all 3 females and the one male, and transfering them to the 29 gallon tank that houses the rest of my shrimp. Hopefully she will settle down in that tank. Even if she eats a few babies in there, that wouldn't be such a bad thing, that tank is home to hoards and hoards of guppies that are just mixed, no special strains.

Do you think it could have been lack of food? I did notice that this particular female will swim to the top of the tank and eat flake right off the surface of the water when I feed. I hate to overfeed, but I am now adding crab cuisine for the shrimp. 

Thanks for all the help,
Tina


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## jhoetzl (Feb 7, 2005)

I have seen Amanos go after tubifex and blackworms that were stuck in moss and other plants, so I don't see why they wouldn't try to go for a fry, but the speed that fry can move would be a challenge for my amanos to capture.
But, I don't keep anything but snails in my fry tank to clean up some leftovers, and since snails reproduce faster than I'd like, they become a great food source for my dwarf puffer tank.

If you really want to raise those fry, I'd put them in a non decorated environment on their own, with a simple hob filter with a sponge over the intake or a simple air/bubble filter. Daily 10-20% water changes and lots of feedings (I do about 6 a day) of good quality foods (Live BBS or even frozen bbs), and flake and/or dry foods ground up in a mortar, in decently warm (78-80 or so) water. For the guppy fry. 
Never raised rams, but for guppies...that would do.
A simple 10g tank with a normal cheapy standard light fixture should handle them till they are a little bigger. Then off to the market or whatever...


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## dissident (Oct 15, 2003)

I have kept amano in a guppy fry tank for a long time now and have never seen them go after any of them, much less eat one...  Granted it is a 55gal with 6 Amano they could have cought a few and I could never know about it. My amano just seem content to chill on the rocks in there and pick at those.


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## Aphyosemion (Oct 15, 2004)

They say there are no true herbivores and no true carnivores, since even a deer eating grass eats some bugs and even a carnivore eats the contents of it's prey's stomach. That being said, many herbivores are still opportunists and will sometimes take irresistible treats like tiny slow moving fry. I have a hard time believing an amano would do that, but it is not outside the realm of possibility. I have to say though that I have never seen an amano show any kind of aggressive or opportunistic behavior yet.
-Aphyosemion


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## Georgiadawgger (Apr 23, 2004)

Aphyosemion said:


> They say there are no true herbivores and no true carnivores, since even a deer eating grass eats some bugs and even a carnivore eats the contents of it's prey's stomach.
> -Aphyosemion



Where in the world did you get that!!??? Its simply called the food chain and eventual biomagnification/transfer of nutrients. There are herbivores or better yet, folivores...you can break down folivores down to sap sucking, leaf chewing, etc...then the typical detritivores, etc.


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## whitepine (Apr 13, 2004)

I had to move some amano's from a tank that had cherry shimp in it... the amano's where becoming quite red from eating all the cherry babies


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## sarahbobarah (May 20, 2005)

Oh man...... that's prolly where all my baby molly fry went - in amano tummies!!!! Grrrr.... I put about 20 of them into my "algae clean room" and now there's only 2.....


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## erie (Apr 12, 2004)

Last night I bought 10 Zebra Danio's for my 55gal planted.
Did the whole float the bag and slowly add tank water for about an hour and a half. Left the lights off and added the fish to the tank. Checked back in about a half and hour and one of my adult amano was eating one of the larger danios. I had that shrimp in a 20gal planted with some 6 Neon's but could never find out what was happening to the neons. Well I guess I found out now  

If the amano keeps this up he'll become Oscar food. I'll teach him something about the food-chain. 

I have over 6 amano's in that tank and I dont want to loose them, wondering what kind of smaller fish I could keep with the amano. In the end I want a Blue Ram, but the tank is not ready. Any suggestions?


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## Louis (May 1, 2004)

i have heard about sheep eating rabbits.


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## geekgirl (Feb 4, 2003)

Old thread, I know. But my husband has 3 amanos in his little tank at work. They ate 2 dwarf pencil fish and 9 ember tetras. Yup. So now he has a tank with 3 huge amanos and one Oto Niger. Nobody else. Dumb shrimp.


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## azn_fishy55 (Dec 17, 2005)

I watched a documentary on animal mysteries and one of the topics was on a 'monster' eating these baby birds.But in the end it was the deer that live on the island.I believe they explained they only ate the baby birds because the lask on certain nutrients in their diet.So maybe the Amanos were lacking some sort of nutrient and needed a supply so took the fish in the tank as their supply.


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## cristamysti (Nov 10, 2015)

well i have an aquarium with 3 amano shrimps, 1 ghost shrimp, 1 blue shrimp and several other red cherry shrimps. i also have a kuhli loach and put 2 guppy fry with them and to date ive never seen them doing them harm and the fry have grown much bigger. now to try an experiment - i have now 38 4-day old guppy fry, i will put 2 of them and see if they survive..if they wont be attacked i will increase by putting some of the other fry into this aquarium!


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