Looking for a new aquarium challenge? If you've already successfully bred higher-order dwarf shrimp like red cherry shrimp, which hatch looking like miniature adults, you could take things up a notch by trying your hand at breeding Amano shrimp (Caridina multidentata). Their young hatch as larvae, making things quite a bit more complicated. Amano shrimp also go by Yamato shrimp, Japanese swamp shrimp, Japonica shrimp or Takashi amano shrimp.

Keep reading for everything you need to know about breeding Amano shrimp!

Amano Shrimp Breeding

Amano shrimp are one of the hardest shrimp species to breed in the freshwater aquarium hobby. It was actually thought impossible for a good while, but through lots of experimenting, there are aquarists who have managed to pull it off. Keeping Amano shrimp in your peaceful community tank, however, is quite easy. Overall care for these great algae eaters in a freshwater tank is easy.

There are 4 things to focus on while trying to breed freshwater Amano shrimp: inducing breeding, breeding/carrying of eggs, raising the young, and acclimation to freshwater. Two of these variables are easy to pull off (the first two, to be precise), while the other two will be a little more difficult.

Compelling your Amano shrimp to breed will require a sexed pair of shrimp, stable water parameters, and a food source.

Sexing Amano shrimp

Female Amano shrimp will be larger, averaging around 1.5"-2", and have brown, dashed lines along their bodies. Males are a little smaller, averaging around 1"-1.5", and sport dots along their bodies rather than dashes. Females can have a bright or dull green "saddle" on their back, which is actually where the eggs develop in their ovaries.

Keep in mind that it's difficult to sex Amano shrimp at a young age. At roughly 3 to 4 months, it becomes more prominent which is which.

Amano shrimp (Caridina multidentata) female.
Female Amano shrimp carrying eggs.
berried-adult-female
Berried Adult Female. Close up of the eggs, the black dots are the babies' eyes.

Amano Shrimp For Sale

What will you need?

  • Pair of sexed Amano shrimp (one male Amano shrimp and one female Amano shrimp)
  • High-quality shrimp food
  • Sea Salt Mix (Instant Ocean Sea Salt Mix is recommended; NOT table salt, pickling salt, aquarium salt, etc.)
  • Aquarium light (to grow saltwater algae)
  • Container (to hold the saltwater and larvae)
  • 2 air pumps with accessories (airline tubing, check valve, control valve, air stone, etc.)
  • 1-gallon container (for dechlorinated freshwater)
  • RODI or RO water
  • Hydrometer or Refractometer
  • Flashlight
  • Pipette or eye dropper
  • Syringe (with a decently sized opening)

Before Breeding

Once you've collected all the gear you'll need for your Amano shrimp breeding project, it's time to prepare for the moment of truth.

  • You'll be setting up a saltwater jar using one of the air pumps with its accessories and saltwater mix. Try to aim for 30-35 PPT saltwater (1.022-1.026 Specific Gravity).
  • Once got your water mixed, you can add the airstone (optionally with a sponge filter attached) and have it pump out a gentle stream of air.
  • Position the light above the container and allow it to mature. Bugs may fly into it and die, creating Ammonia, which is a nutrient required by algae to grow (so no worries about that!).
  • Over time, water will evaporate, causing the salinity will go up. Top off the evaporation with RODI or RO water to maintain the right salinity.
  • After a while, the jar will be filled with diatoms and other sorts of algae growth.

Breeding Parameters

Water parameters should be kept stable within the acceptable ranges.

  • The pH should be between 6.5-8.0
  • The temperature should be consistent between 70°F-80 °F
  • GH should be 5-15
  • KH 1-10

When you're trying to breed Amano shrimp, food should be readily available. Algae in the tank can be an adequate food source, but is not always present in the right quantities.

If there is not enough food available, you can supplement with blanched vegetables and prepared fish food.

How do Amano shrimp breed?

Once your Amano shrimp are sexually mature (4-5 months), if the above-mentioned requirements are met, they'll breed. No intervention needed on your part!

Amano shrimp breed after the female molts. The female amano shrimp will attempt to hide, but also release pheromones into the water column. Male shrimp will sense these pheromones and will find her in order to mate. Afterwards, the female will carry the fertilized eggs in her pleopods/swimmerets until the eggs hatch.

This is considered the easy part of breeding Amanos: they will breed readily as long as the female is ready.

After the shrimp have bred, the female will keep the eggs in her pleopods/swimmerets for 3-5 weeks while they develop. Once the third week rolls around, you should prepare the 1-gallon container you have ready and fill it up. Set up the air pump and the accessories so there is a good amount of flow. If the female were to release all of the eggs before hatching, the flow from the air stone would keep the eggs well-oxygenated and fungus-free.

Allow the water to get to room temperature and then transfer your berried female. Watch closely, as the eggs may hatch soon or take another 2 weeks.

Raising the Larvae

This is going to be the difficult part, so be warned. These guys are TINY!

After the eggs hatch, the Amano shrimp larvae have roughly 1 week to survive in freshwater. Turn off all surrounding light and shine a flashlight at one spot on the container. The Amano larvae are attracted to light and will move towards it, making it much easier to round them all up.

Place the larvae in a temporary container, like a betta cup. You may have to repeat this step multiple times, as not all of the eggs will hatch at the same rate. Once you have rounded up as many as you feel like, transfer them into the saltwater jar. Acclimation is not required.

Watch closely as the larvae do their thing, floating around and eating algae. They will do this till they metamorphize, which will take 2 to 3 months.

To keep the water in the larva container clean, you can use the flashlight trick you used to catch them earlier. Point the flashlight to one corner and then use some airline tubing to siphon out 10-20% of the water. Replace with clean water matching in temperature and salinity. Use the drip method if you're worried about shocking the shrimp.

Feeding the Amano Larvae

The larvae are much too small to eat any regular foods, including very tiny items like baby brine shrimp. Instead, they should feed on the algae growing on the rearing tank container walls. Naturally grown diatoms and other algae are the best food sources for them, after all!

Supplemental feedings are not necessary, as this can easily foul the water and kill all of the larvae. If you really feel like you should feed them, like if your diatom population isn't up to par, spirulina powder is an acceptable food. Use just a small pinch.

Capturing and Acclimating the Larvae

It is easy to tell when your Amano larvae metamorphize. They will swim forward rapidly, mimicking what they would do in the wild: swimming from the ocean, upstream into brackish, then into freshwater for the rest of their lives. Congratulations, they are now actual shrimp, albeit very tiny ones.

Once this happens, it's time for you to act. Warning: this is a little difficult! Catching the fry can be tricky, as they are quite fast.

  • Attach a small piece of airline tubing, approximately 2"-3", to the syringe and stick it into the container.
  • When the shrimp stop swimming, quickly move the syringe near them and start pulling on the plunger. This may take several attempts, as they will try to evade the airline.
  • Once you have a few captured, squirt the them out of the tube and/or syringe into a cup. Make sure there is enough saltwater to cover them. Once they're in the right spot, acclimation will take approximately 24-36 hours.
  • Take a long piece of airline tubing and attach an air stone to one end and a control valve to the other.
  • The airstone end goes into the tank, preventing any baby shrimp or preexisting shrimp from being sucked up. The control valve end goes into the cup. Start the siphon by sucking on it very lightly.
  • Once you've got the water flowing, slow it down to roughly 1 drop per second. It is recommended to check the cup every few hours, to ensure it doesn't overflow.
  • After acclimating for 24-36 hours, slowly pour the contents of the cup into the tank. The diluted saltwater should not affect the water parameters drastically.

Amano shrimp care

If all went well, you've now got a bunch of small but fully developed Amano shrimp on your hands. These can live with various peaceful freshwater fish species or with other shrimp, especially when they've grown large enough to avoid being eaten.

Caring for these hardy shrimp in your fish tank, as mentioned, is easy. They eat pretty much anything, from diatoms to algae wafers, sinking pellets and frozen foods to dead fish. They also consume algae, even pesky types like black beard algae, helping to keep your aquarium looking its best. Call them the janitors of the aquarium hobby!

Keep your Amanos in a well-planted and fully cycled single-species tank or community tank. A tank size of at least 5-10 gallons is ideal. Add plenty of shrimp tubes and other hides, and choose peaceful community fish as tankmates. Larger and more aggressive fish may bother or eat your Amano shrimp.

You can read more about these algae-eating shrimp in the full Amano shrimp care guide.

Frequently asked questions

Do Amano shrimp eat their own young?

It's unlikely, but you'll have to separate the larvae from their mom anyway. They need to be in saltwater until they metamorphose.

Conclusion

Voilà! If your baby Amano shrimp have gotten this far, you might just have pulled it off. Not many aquarists can do it, so feel free to comment on this post to brag about it. We'd love to hear your experiences, tips & tricks and even if it went wrong and why.