Otocats and amano shrimp

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo

amano fan

Feeder Fish
Aug 6, 2008
2
0
0
North Carolina
Greetings I am a new participant - just registered today.

I have three tanks, one of which is a 14-G planted freshwater tank - today I noticed some changes in the 14G tank that I would like to better understand.

For one thing - the three otocinclus that I had in the tank have disappeared. Since the second week or so, I could only find two. Now many weeks later, there aren't any. I am guessing either they jumped out of the covered tank... (but there is no sign of their dead bodies anywhere) -- or they were eaten by other inhabitants - which consists of only male guppies, zebra danios, mystery snails and Amano shrimp. What do you think happened to my otocats? A third possibility is that I killed them by adding Jungle brand antiparasite pellets and maybe the fish just cleaned up the corpses for me.

The second mystery is this: I stocked this tank with three Amano shrimp and today I noticed not three, but FOUR same-sized shrimp (three glassy greens and one bright red.) I routinely add a tiny bit of salt to the new water... (about 1/2 tsp per 5 gallons) but I read that to survive -- the shrimp babies require brackish water for the first month or two of life. This fourth shrimp - as far I can tell must be a survivor of the red female's eggs? Can anyone shed some light on this observation?

I hope my tank is big enough and my fauna interesting enough to remain in your club and learn from the Monsters Fishkeepers.

"Amano fan"
 
shrimps do a great job of cleaning up dead bodies they give the perfect "communion"
 
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