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Amano behaviour?

M

murph

Member
Joined
21 Apr 2010
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224
Location
Irvine
My amanos seem pretty happy in the tank, very active and industrious wee buggers. However there displaying some strange behaviour just over the last few days.

I've seen amanos piggy back on each other with 2 or 3 on the back of one other. Is this mating behaviour? I assume the bigger amanos are female and the smaller one male? It seems to be the smaller ones doing the piggybacking. Also I've found 2 empty skins suggesting the amanos are growing but I've also found 2 dead with soft skins, half eaten by other amanos. I've stopped dosing easycarbo incase this is killing the newly shed shrimp?
 
what size is the tank and whats the stocking.
Also what are your chemical levels. (Ammonia etc)

yes the smaller shrimps are the males and piggybacking is normally i sign of mating.

have you added anything new to the tank recently?

obviously whn they shed their exoskeletons they are very vulnerable so they like to hide for a day or two until they are back to normal.

My main thought might be that something is picking on the vulnerable shrimps in your tank, but that could be clarified when you mention your stocking.

I take it W/C's are up to scratch and they are being fed enough. (tablets and veggies)
 
Nick,

260l tank, has been up and running for about a month so still bedding in. Water chemistry is stable, no spikes in ammonia, hard to tell with the test kit but it did seem to be just above the base level if at all the last time I checked after the last shrimp snuffed it. To be fair I don't really test the water as long as everything looks happy enough and the plants are growing (except the vivpara which as totally melted) I assume everything is fine.

I've got into the habit of 100l water changes daily but will be cutting this back soon. Ferts are EI and some ADA step 1 just because Its there.

Stocking is light with 8 corys, 8 pristellas, I did have silvertips but they were aggressive buggers (I did see them go after a shrimp once) so they are away (incidentally I haven't seen any dead shrimp since they've been out!)

I've added some ottos 6 to keep the algae down, and there were lampeyes which I think also suffered from the silvertips as the 3 out of the 7 I have left have been much happier and active since the silvertips are out (the amanos ate them too).

The Amanos eat everything, any sinking fish food that goes into the tank they hoover right up, I put in some cucumber but they showed no signs of interest.
 
Hi mine amanos are behavior very funny too over the past few days! i rip up my heater cable destroying most of my tank in the process, in hindsight i such have just unplugged it. my amanos have all been together, piggy-backing and flicking there back legs. i did some big water change after the heater cable removal, but the back legs flicking is cause for concern!! hope they are ok? they are curling there tail which i think they tend to do just before shedding?? Any thoughts??
 
Although a different species my CRS do this when they're 'in the mood'. Supposedly shrimp only mate when freshly moulted. The full moon also can inspire crazy shrimp.
 
mine have also been curling their tails alot recently too.

Things seem to have leveled out now, removed the slivertips and the vivipara that melted and no more dead shrimp!
 
I was speaking to a LFS owner who said " sounds like your shrimp are breeding, you lucky bugger" I said i got two of my shrimp all ready with babies on there back legs. The LFS stated the babies need backish water once they leave the parents, can any one confirm this??? this make sense because i never saw any of babies after they left there parents!
 
yep amanos need brakish water to breed. very tricky to do. even if you do manage to get brakish water tank set up there is still no guarantee...
 
Thanks for info, i think of setting up a nano experiment tank to see what hapens if i put a few shrimps in and then make it brackish, but i need to do some more research into this! Many thanks again
 
Just lost one shrimp , does know what is wrong , four ok, three looking not ok!! they are laying on there backs just kick there legs!! can in be not enough calium and they are have problems shedding??help
 
Sounds like something is poisoning them, I would change half of the water. I don't think it is the ferts. If you have put the adults in brackish water then that is the problem. The adults are freshwater, it is only the larvae that can live in brackish water.
Peter
 
thanks for reply peter
Changing half the water is 100litres, this is hard for me to do as my water change tank only take 35 litre.i have been doing 20% changes each time, every other day. They are stiil in freshwater!! Things seem to have settled down abit!! i am still keeping up the water changes, but my new digtal timer decided to leave my co2 on all night! not good but all seems ok!
 
Hmm, I had this problem once but lost the shrimp before I got to the bottom of it, mine happened after a particularly large water change, I assumed that it was because I'd used hot water that the copper content was very high. I always strugled with inverts in Hollington/stoke on trent. Something in the water dispatches them straight away regardless of set up, it used to kill pond snails in 24 hours if you added them into it.
 
the hot water thoery makes sense because i did a hot water change the other day!! mixer tap was on the hot side! i need to get a water report from my water board!! thanks
 
I had one but there was nothing out of the unusual. Too weird for me though, it's so hard to track issues like that because the kits are either impossible to get or so inaccurate you can't get a good idea of the problems.
 
just found another dead shrimp, but by the state of him, he die yesterday! my light do not go on until after i have gone to work! many thanke again for all the help!
 
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