Amano shrimp/murderers? Or just clean up?

[Wufghi88]

Ok so I have three good size amano shirmp and almost every day I am loosing a guppie. My tank is heavily planted and all my water parameters are great. It's a well established tank about two years old. The guppies I have been loosing were healthy and not sick or showing any signs of bad health. And had been in there for a while( 3 or 4 months)

I'm not really looking for a reason my guppies are dying I'm wondering if anyone else had had Amanos go predatory? I know ghosts will but I haven't heard of Amanos killing fish. I know they will eat them once their dead( and I think that's how all this started) because every time I turn the lights on in the am they're munching on a fresh guppie corpses.

So anyone ever experience this?

 

[bettaowner]

Amano shrimps are algae eaters so I really don't see that as a likely possibility.

 

[manbeast]

Never lost any fish that I know of but my wife watched as one of the Amano shrimp grabbed an adult cherry shrimp without warning or provocation bit off its head and just started chowing down on the remaining body

 

[Autumnsky]

Amanos eat algae, but love to munch on meaty treats, they are scavengers.

I was feeding my shrimp a algae wafer only diet and then got the special shrimp food from the far away lfs. The Amanos started going crazy for it swimming up all to the top and grabbing a tiny wafer and running off with it, after a few times of this I dropped them a Hikari omnivore sinking wafer and they went absolutely crazy for it, tried dropping in Algae wafer chunk and no interest, omnivore sinking pellet - straight for it like a insane mad dash.

Try it for your self. Mine would grab it and go into the moss and much it like a hamburger.

 

[Fishfur]

Nearly all shrimp are indiscrimate consumers of whatever they can find and eating dead fish or shrimp is typical. I doubt an Amano is capable of catching a fish though, they have quite tiny claws. If the fish was already sick and unable to swim away, I can see them preying on it, but catching a healthy one, not very likely.

Even the one seen tearing off a shrimp's head, chances are fair the shrimp was not a healthy one. Bear in mind, animals have an instinct to hide illness for as long as they can, because to be sick is to be prey. So even if a fish or shrimp appears healthy to us, it may not be as healthy as it looks, and other animals can sense this far better than we can.

I've seen Amanos and Ghosts, palaemonetes sp., eat baby Snowball shrimp that were alive, but only up to a point. The Snowballs were in a breeding net, where they had nowhwere to hide for one thing. At the time I hadn't considered I should probably cover the net, having never used one before.

Amanos, Ghosts, Blue Claw Whiskers and two Danios all managed to get inside the net the first day and snack on some baby shrimp. But the shrimp also climbed out quite quickly too. Most of those that did survived, having many hiding places in the tank proper. I covered the net once I realized it was not very safe, so no more predation on the babies left inside. But larger shrimp will take newborns and very young ones if they find them until they are large enough to get away.

 

[Wufghi88]

Thanks for all your replies and helpful insight I guess that theory doesn't pan out! Lol one thing I know for sure is that they love meaty treats. The second gup I found was just a skeleton when I turned the lights on. I had to pull it out to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was. Any ways thanks again for the replies. Now I guess I gotta find out what's killing my guppies. not to worried about it right now though, they're breeding now and will soon over run the tank and the fry will make great angel food. (Sorry if that offended anyone, but it is nature) have a great night.