Who's Says Shrimps Don't Attack?

[snazy]

I asked this question on another forum and I got an interesting reply from a member that actually has an aquatic shop.
 
Well, there are possible situations, when your fishes get shocked for example.

Water change with different parameters, or just crazy shy fishes (amandae fishes sticking in the ground mimic that they are dead etc.. typical).
In this case if you have large amano shrimps (3-4 yrs old ones which are pretty large) and there are a real group of them, they immediatelly catch the fish which act a bit differently.
I've seen it in our tank 2 years ago, when we had like 50 Popondetta Furcata (which is a pretty energetic fish with good movement) in a 240L tank. The fishes got a shock at water change and 6-8 of them fell to the ground in a second. In 2-3 seconds! the srimps caught them and they ate them immediatelly! We had 40 large amano shrimps in this tank.

So after a few minutes you could only see the skeleton of these fishes. They just did not have a chance to get out from the shock. I've never seen this before, but just with anything else and as many tanks we have there could be unlimited situations.

So yeah, if you do not feed these shimps and they are in an adult form with a good number of them, strange things can happen sometimes. Their appetite is huge! But I never saw this since that time.
Of course they eat the fallen ones very quickly as they are good housekeepers

but this was probably the most shocking moment that i've seen on this topic.

 

[Elrohirthehasty]

Hey man, if I were a hungry Amano shrimp, those fish I live with start to look pretty tasty after a while...

 

[Paradise3]

Snazy, that is once again another understandable situation. If the fish are shocked and therefore weak, even for a second, the shrimp will notice this and take there chances

 

[snazy]

I understand what you mean guys. But not even a predatory fish will jump on a "schocked" fish so fast and at the end of the day these fish could have been saved if they didn't get eaten in minutes by amanos. So point is, amanos can be aggressive..... If I have a more aggressive tank one day I'll consider them but for now cherry shrimp do a great job for me.

 

[Baccus]

I think the main problem with amano shrimp is that for starters many shops claim to be selling them but unfortunately sometimes have other shrimp species mingled in with them. An Australian guy I know is constantly trying to explain to people that simply looking at a shrimps markings (especially in wild caught non-domestically bred shrimp) will not tell you what species or type of shrimp it is. For that reason I don't think you can always blame the shop or person selling the shrimp for misidentifying it.
 
 The other problem is that amano shrimp where originally a huge boon for purely aqua scaped tanks namely Dutch style tanks,  where the shrimp only had a choice of plant matter, each other and the odd bit of actual food put in the tank for them to eat. So the theory that amano shrimp where perfect community tank inhabitants took a hold.
But then as the shrimp got found out about by more and more general fish hobbiests, they got added into tanks with fish, believing that amano shrimp are pure vegetarians. I don't believe any shrimp is a pure vegetarian and will gladly have a go at eating most things they encounter. I have watched my own peaceful inoffensive cherry shrimp gladly eat squashed rams horn snails, as well as any of their own fallen relatives with gusto.
I have watched my own typus shrimp ( a very similar shrimp to amano) and because of their size and food aggression I have no doubt that they would gladly pick off the odd fish in my tank of guppies.
So as Snazy has already said perhaps sticking to the dwarf species of shrimp, such as cherry shrimp and all of their colour morphs and crystal shrimp, for community tanks is a better option, or keep purely shrimp tanks.
Personally I keep only certain shrimp with species of fish that are suited to them.

 

[Paradise3]

I was only going off experience, even when one of my female betta's developed dropsy my Amano's didn't attack her despite being weak and unable to swim properly... I can't keep Cherries alive for some unknown reason... They just die in my tanks. They won't breed and then they die.

 

[Baccus]

Perhaps Paradise3 if your amano shrimp was with a solitary Siamese fighter, then the amano was already getting a more meaty diet because of the fighters food. Just a thought.
 
As for your cherry shrimp not breeding, where they the standard red cherry shrimp? I have heard of people having troubles breeding and keeping the more fancy/ expensive colour morphs. It seems the more line bred (inbred) cherry shrimp are in order to establish the various colours the fussier the little dears get in water requirements.

 

[Paradise3]

Perhaps Paradise3 if your amano shrimp was with a solitary Siamese fighter, then the amano was already getting a more meaty diet because of the fighters food. Just a thought.
 
As for your cherry shrimp not breeding, where they the standard red cherry shrimp? I have heard of people having troubles breeding and keeping the more fancy/ expensive colour morphs. It seems the more line bred (inbred) cherry shrimp are in order to establish the various colours the fussier the little dears get in water requirements.

 
They were housed with 5 female Betta's, Emerald Eye and Red Tail Rasboras and Male Guppies. Even some temporary baby Paradise fish when mine kicked their babies out. They were getting the odd bloodworm but other than that they were on standard Tropical Flake food and Algae Wafers. I know, not the best for betta's but it was all I had at the time.
 
Yes, just standard red cherry shrimp. No fancy colours or morphs or anything.

 

[Wildbetta]

Were the cherries in the same tank as the female bettas?  If so, there is the reason they never bred.  Cherry shrimp will normally stop breeding if there is a predator that intimidates them enough.  Also the bettas (and some of the other fish) were probably picking at them any chance they could.  Just my thoughts on your cherry issue.  If they were in a tank by themselves, then it was probably something different that I have no idea about.  I know that my cherries hardly bred at all when I had them in with my scarlet badis.  Once I moved everyone around, I suddenly started seeing berried females and tiny little baby shrimp.
 
My thoughts on shrimp, especially the bigger ones, are they are opportunistic predators and if they can catch a live fish -- they will.  I kept some of the mexican dwarf orange crayfish.  They are reported by many people to be able to live with dwarf shrimp, fish, and plants without causing any harm to any of them.  I experienced them hunt my cherries down, and they nipped the tails of my pygmaeous corys.  They have been plant safe so at least that part is correct.  The point of that is, anything that eats meat will predate on their tankmates if possible which is something every fish keeper needs to keep in mind when adding them to their tank.

 

[Paradise3]

Were the cherries in the same tank as the female bettas?  If so, there is the reason they never bred.  Cherry shrimp will normally stop breeding if there is a predator that intimidates them enough.  Also the bettas (and some of the other fish) were probably picking at them any chance they could.  Just my thoughts on your cherry issue.  If they were in a tank by themselves, then it was probably something different that I have no idea about.  I know that my cherries hardly bred at all when I had them in with my scarlet badis.  Once I moved everyone around, I suddenly started seeing berried females and tiny little baby shrimp.

 
The Cherries were alone, it was the Amano's that were with the betta's.

 

[Wildbetta]

 

Were the cherries in the same tank as the female bettas?  If so, there is the reason they never bred.  Cherry shrimp will normally stop breeding if there is a predator that intimidates them enough.  Also the bettas (and some of the other fish) were probably picking at them any chance they could.  Just my thoughts on your cherry issue.  If they were in a tank by themselves, then it was probably something different that I have no idea about.  I know that my cherries hardly bred at all when I had them in with my scarlet badis.  Once I moved everyone around, I suddenly started seeing berried females and tiny little baby shrimp.

 
The Cherries were alone, it was the Amano's that were with the betta's.
 

Ok then I have no idea about your cherries then.     Sorry.  Wish it would have been as easy as it being the reason I stated above.

 

[snazy]

From my experience cherry shrimp are very hardy. They don't die easily. They won't like any trace ammonia levels on constant basis I suppose, copper obviously if the tap water is rich on it and one doesn't dechlorinate enough, and they also need good acclimating when first introduced. I've also noticed they won't breed in high nitrates. I had placed two cherries in order to breed them in a breeder box that had it's own sponge filter. They would not breed for many weeks. At some stage I checked the TDS and nitrates and they has sky rocketed despite my water changes. The moment I put the shrimp back in the shrimp tank where the water was better, the female was berried within days.

 

[Paradise3]

My Nitrates were below 10ppm constantly as I had loads of live plants using it up, I checked my pipes in the house and as far as I'm aware, no copper pipes.
 
I'm thinking of trying them again in my big tank when it's planted out as I don't think it was that they didn't breed as I always had one berried female at least but never any babies(I know babies are tiny and shrimp hide well but my females died when berried ) so I might try them again and if the same happens, I just can't keep them alive.

 

[snazy]

You may as well have come across a bad batch if you tried only once. You never know in what conditions those were kept before. Try to buy small juveniles as they adapt better to new water stats and drip acclimate them until the water stats are equal. You can use the Ph liquid test as an indicator. I use a TDS meter as it's easier. It may take a couple of hours or more but it's worth it with shrimp. I think amanos are hardier in general compared to dwarf shrimp so you may have had at that time a temporary issue with the water quality, or just unlucky.
 
 Once you pass the initiall stage you'll be surprised how hardy these shrimp actually are. Mine are breeding faster than snails and I am overloaded and I don't do anything special or trying to be more careful with them. Water change is draining the tank in half each week and filling straight from the tap with temperature matched water. Dechlor goes straight into the tank. I've moved numerous shrimp to other tanks but still when I drop food into the shrimp tank the bottoms suddenly converts into a "red carpet"
The last time I washed the filters I ended up with 30-40 baby shrimp in the bucket so I had to pour the dirty water back in into one tank because there was no way I'd catch 2mm shrimp one by one.

 

[Paradise3]

You may as well have come across a bad batch if you tried only once. You never know in what conditions those were kept before. Try to buy small juveniles as they adapt better to new water stats and drip acclimate them until the water stats are equal. You can use the Ph liquid test as an indicator. I use a TDS meter as it's easier. It may take a couple of hours or more but it's worth it with shrimp. I think amanos are hardier in general compared to dwarf shrimp so you may have had at that time a temporary issue with the water quality, or just unlucky.
 
 Once you pass the initiall stage you'll be surprised how hardy these shrimp actually are. Mine are breeding faster than snails and I am overloaded and I don't do anything special or trying to be more careful with them. Water change is draining the tank in half each week and filling straight from the tap with temperature matched water. Dechlor goes straight into the tank. I've moved numerous shrimp to other tanks but still when I drop food into the shrimp tank the bottoms suddenly converts into a "red carpet"

The last time I washed the filters I ended up with 30-40 baby shrimp in the bucket so I had to pour the dirty water back in into one tank because there was no way I'd catch 2mm shrimp one by one.

 
I've tried twice but I will try it again when my tank is sorted out
 
My PH is 7 if that helps? And my KH is 30mg/l so I have soft water as far as I'm aware...