Looking for a new aquarium challenge? If you've already successfully bred higher-order dwarf shrimp like red cherry shrimp, which hatch looking like miniature adults, you could take things up a notch by trying your hand at breeding Amano shrimp (Caridina multidentata). Their young hatch as larvae, making things quite a bit more complicated. Amano shrimp also go by Yamato shrimp, Japanese swamp shrimp, Japonica shrimp or Takashi amano shrimp.
Keep reading for everything you need to know about breeding Amano shrimp!
Amano shrimp are one of the hardest shrimp species to breed in the freshwater aquarium hobby. It was actually thought impossible for a good while, but through lots of experimenting, there are aquarists who have managed to pull it off. Keeping Amano shrimp in your peaceful community tank, however, is quite easy. Overall care for these great algae eaters in a freshwater tank is easy.
There are 4 things to focus on while trying to breed freshwater Amano shrimp: inducing breeding, breeding/carrying of eggs, raising the young, and acclimation to freshwater. Two of these variables are easy to pull off (the first two, to be precise), while the other two will be a little more difficult.
Compelling your Amano shrimp to breed will require a sexed pair of shrimp, stable water parameters, and a food source.
Female Amano shrimp will be larger, averaging around 1.5"-2", and have brown, dashed lines along their bodies. Males are a little smaller, averaging around 1"-1.5", and sport dots along their bodies rather than dashes. Females can have a bright or dull green "saddle" on their back, which is actually where the eggs develop in their ovaries.
Keep in mind that it's difficult to sex Amano shrimp at a young age. At roughly 3 to 4 months, it becomes more prominent which is which.
Amano Shrimp For Sale
Once you've collected all the gear you'll need for your Amano shrimp breeding project, it's time to prepare for the moment of truth.
Water parameters should be kept stable within the acceptable ranges.
When you're trying to breed Amano shrimp, food should be readily available. Algae in the tank can be an adequate food source, but is not always present in the right quantities.
If there is not enough food available, you can supplement with blanched vegetables and prepared fish food.
Once your Amano shrimp are sexually mature (4-5 months), if the above-mentioned requirements are met, they'll breed. No intervention needed on your part!
Amano shrimp breed after the female molts. The female amano shrimp will attempt to hide, but also release pheromones into the water column. Male shrimp will sense these pheromones and will find her in order to mate. Afterwards, the female will carry the fertilized eggs in her pleopods/swimmerets until the eggs hatch.
This is considered the easy part of breeding Amanos: they will breed readily as long as the female is ready.
After the shrimp have bred, the female will keep the eggs in her pleopods/swimmerets for 3-5 weeks while they develop. Once the third week rolls around, you should prepare the 1-gallon container you have ready and fill it up. Set up the air pump and the accessories so there is a good amount of flow. If the female were to release all of the eggs before hatching, the flow from the air stone would keep the eggs well-oxygenated and fungus-free.
Allow the water to get to room temperature and then transfer your berried female. Watch closely, as the eggs may hatch soon or take another 2 weeks.
This is going to be the difficult part, so be warned. These guys are TINY!
After the eggs hatch, the Amano shrimp larvae have roughly 1 week to survive in freshwater. Turn off all surrounding light and shine a flashlight at one spot on the container. The Amano larvae are attracted to light and will move towards it, making it much easier to round them all up.
Place the larvae in a temporary container, like a betta cup. You may have to repeat this step multiple times, as not all of the eggs will hatch at the same rate. Once you have rounded up as many as you feel like, transfer them into the saltwater jar. Acclimation is not required.
Watch closely as the larvae do their thing, floating around and eating algae. They will do this till they metamorphize, which will take around 1.5 months.
To keep the water in the larva container clean, you can use the flashlight trick you used to catch them earlier. Point the flashlight to one corner and then use some airline tubing to siphon out 10-20% of the water. Replace with clean water matching in temperature and salinity. Use the drip method if you're worried about shocking the shrimp.
The larvae are much too small to eat any regular foods, including very tiny items like baby brine shrimp. Instead, they should feed on the algae growing on the rearing tank container walls. Naturally grown diatoms and other algae are the best food sources for them, after all!
Supplemental feedings are not necessary, as this can easily foul the water and kill all of the larvae. If you really feel like you should feed them, like if your diatom population isn't up to par, spirulina powder is an acceptable food. Use just a small pinch.
It is easy to tell when your Amano larvae metamorphize. They will swim forward rapidly, mimicking what they would do in the wild: swimming from the ocean, upstream into brackish, then into freshwater for the rest of their lives. Congratulations, they are now actual shrimp, albeit very tiny ones.
Once this happens, it's time for you to act. Warning: this is a little difficult! Catching the fry can be tricky, as they are quite fast.
If all went well, you've now got a bunch of small but fully developed Amano shrimp on your hands. These can live with various peaceful freshwater fish species or with other shrimp, especially when they've grown large enough to avoid being eaten.
Caring for these hardy shrimp in your fish tank, as mentioned, is easy. They eat pretty much anything, from diatoms to algae wafers, sinking pellets and frozen foods to dead fish. They also consume algae, even pesky types like black beard algae, helping to keep your aquarium looking its best. Call them the janitors of the aquarium hobby!
Keep your Amanos in a well-planted and fully cycled single-species tank or community tank. A tank size of at least 5-10 gallons is ideal. Add plenty of shrimp tubes and other hides, and choose peaceful community fish as tankmates. Larger and more aggressive fish may bother or eat your Amano shrimp.
You can read more about these algae-eating shrimp in the full Amano shrimp care guide .
It's unlikely, but you'll have to separate the larvae from their mom anyway. They need to be in saltwater until they metamorphose.
Voilà! If your baby Amano shrimp have gotten this far, you might just have pulled it off. Not many aquarists can do it, so feel free to comment on this post to brag about it. We'd love to hear your experiences, tips & tricks and even if it went wrong and why.