New baby shrimp amongst Amanos--ID needed!

[bennyblee]

Hi all,

So I supposedly have 8 amano shrimp (6 from LFS, 2 from local Petco) in my 65 gallon high display tank, which was set up ~3 months ago and stocked only about 1 month ago. It has lots of hardscape and is moderately planted, and also contains 3 nerite snails, 2 otocinclus, and 1 Siamese Algae Eater. Tonight, I discovered a TINY ~1 cm baby shrimp. Either I have discovered how to breed Amanos in fresh water by accident, or I have some shrimp that are not Amanos as were advertised, which have bred in my tank.

The only thing I can think of is that the 2 shrimp I got from Petco were not Amanos. They were very small, and the employee (who seemed very knowledgeable) said all their shrimp were very young and it was a mixed tank so took great care to separate out two small Amanos from the rest.

Both of those shrimp do indeed seem like they are staying smaller than the other Amanos, one in particular is less than half the size of the others. But they otherwise look identical. I had just assumed they were young.

Is this an Amano? This is the best pic I could get. This is the smallest of the supposed Amanos I got from Petco. I assume that this is the parent of the tiny baby I found? I couldn't get a photo of the baby, it was so small I'd need a macro lens, which I don't have. But it most definitely was a tiny little shrimp, I watched it for several minutes as it crawled over some rocks, swam to the wall, then to the bottom before it disappeared behind some hardscape.

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

Thanks!

[lefty o]

looks like what is normally called a ghost shrimp.

[Spaghider]

Definently a ghost shrimp!

[nabokovfan87]

ghost shrimp or rudolph shrimp (if you see color).

Edited March 19 by nabokovfan87

[bennyblee]

Thanks everyone, now that they are getting bigger I agree it seems like these must be ghost shrimp. Here is a better photo, one of the new arrivals next to an Amano for comparison. I think I must have over a dozen of these little guys now. I know nothing about these shrimp, so I have a few more questions...

How frequently should I expect them to breed? This was a complete accident but I guess they must like my tank conditions! I doubt that I got them from the store already carrying eggs, I'm pretty sure I would have noticed. The two I'm fairly certain were the original pair had disappeared for several weeks after I added them to the tank, hiding deep in my plants somewhere, I had actually assumed they had died before one finally crawled back out.

Also, I assume they will now be competing with my Amanos for algae and anything else, so are specific foods that would be good for both? Will they go after my plants if underfed? Anything else I need to know about keeping them along with Amanos?

Thanks everyone!