Will amanos eat baby shrimp?

[joeychizzle]

As the title implies, has anyone ever witnessed amano shrimp eating baby shrimp? My fire red population was steadily increasing, with fry all over the place, and baby shrimp growing nice and fast. But ever since I got my amano, which is roughly an inch and a half, the fry have completely disappeared and I've noticed a drop in the frequency of berried females. My only inhabitants are random snail I can't identify (I know for SURE it isn't the snail because it is dead slow and isn't an assasin snail), a handful of golden tigers and an otocinclus.

I put it down to my water params being bad but no shrimp were dying and my tank has been running for almost a year. it's also quite planted, without co2. my tds remains at about 200-250 and I don't check other parameters (yeah I know that's bad but my tanks have always magically been ok lol).

I was always under the impression that amanos were somewhat peaceful omnivores. they are absolute pricks when it comes to feeding time but other than that I thought they got along with other shrimp.


Anyone else experience a population stall when introducing a relatively large amano?

even my mom noticed that the fry were gone and she doesn't give a shoot about my tank lol

or maybe it's my hamster secretly escaping the cage and diving for baby shrimp while I sleep haha

[Nils]

I feel like if an amano caught a baby shrimp it would eat it, but they wouldn't go hunting for the baby shrimp. If you have another tank to move it to and then observe and watch for baby shrimp, I'd do that and maybe leave the amano out.

[joeychizzle]

Originally Posted by Nils

I feel like if an amano caught a baby shrimp it would eat it, but they wouldn't go hunting for the baby shrimp. If you have another tank to move it to and then observe and watch for baby shrimp, I'd do that and maybe leave the amano out.

Yeah that's along the lines of what I was thinking. Little baby shrimp blindly wandering into an amano's grasp and the amano is like yeahh free snacks!

I've quarantined the amano in my 1 gal blue dwarf cray/macrobrachium tank so he won't be nibbling on baby shrimp any time soon. in fact he's in shrimp prison now, better learn to fight or you're food

[Kazin]

I have a strong feeling that amano shrimp do hunt shrimplets once they learn how. I had one that seemed to be sort of running around a lot so I checked it out and lo and behold an RCS seemed to give birth to a lot of shrimplets in that area. I didn't catch it in the act, but that was suspicious enough for me.

[Thrills22]

Shrimplets are incredibly nimble and I've never heard of ammanos being active hunters or predators.