Amano Shrimp

Amano shrimp size is larger than that of a cherry shrimp. Males are 1.5 inches large (3-4 cm), female shrimps are 2 inches large (5-6 cm). Coloring is transparent in general, with tiny red-cinnamonic spots (about 0.3 mm in diameter). Depending on the shrimp diet, the color of its body may vary. For example, if Amano shrimp feeds mainly on algae and detritus, they have a greenish tint. However, when feeding the shrimp only with fish food, they get reddish coloring.

It was the shrimp diet that made it so popular among aquarists. Takashi Amano kept them in his tanks due to their ability to eat algae, which didn’t let him create his perfect aquascapes. In tanks, Amano shrimps perform their specific and useful job – they eat filamentous alga. With their small chelae, they eat it piece by piece and free a tank keeper from the necessity of fighting this alga. Amano shrimps perform their very important job faultlessly. They eat green hair algae and other algae on tank plants, moss, tank decorations. Green hair algae actively propagate in the same conditions that decorative tank plants and quickly inlace the whole tank with the thin filaments.