# Do amano shrimp attack fish?



## sciencefiction

I was actually thinking of buying some amano shrimp to add to one of my tanks but I came across some info they can actually attack fish. I am aware their identity can be confused with predatory types of shrimp like baby macrobrachium shrimp but then I came across a few threads where people were sure they had killer amanos and I also found this video on another website:

caridinaeatsfish.flv Video by Duskob | Photobucket

I am just wondering what's your opinion and experience guys? I wouldn't want to introduce a predator as I've got totally peaceful tanks.


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## mafoo

they wont attack healthy fish. They will learn to take the food from the surface tho.

I've seen them eat a half dead fish before. But this is because they are scavengers.


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## Michael W

I've never had them attack any of my fish. I've kept them with Angelfish with no problems for both. If they do attack fish I don't think they actually try to hunt or eat the fish itself I believe its more to do with feeding off the fish's slime on their body similar to what the false siamese algae eaters/ Chinese Algae eater would do but due to the Algae eater's size it will harm the fish. I may be wrong but thats my opinion on cases like this.

Michael.


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## Lindy

One of my amanos grabbed one of the dwarf puffers. Let go of it pretty quick  I think they will eat anything too weak/ill to shake them off.


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## sciencefiction

Thanks for all your replies guys.  That video was pretty gross. It didn't look to me that the fish was that weak but its not mine so I wouldn't know. I've seen my cherry shrimp trying to "massage" my cories  but they never attacked the fish like in that video even when the corys were miniature eggs and fry.
I was reading some people reporting amanos ganging up on fish to kill them too. I don't know if it's true but I don't want to find out for myself, hence asking.


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## viktorlantos

Well, there are possible situations, when your fishes get shocked for example.

Water change with different parameters, or just crazy shy fishes (amandae fishes sticking in the ground mimic that they are dead etc.. typical).
In this case if you have large amano shrimps (3-4 yrs old ones which are pretty large) and there are a real group of them, they immediatelly catch the fish which act a bit differently.
I've seen in our tank 2 years ago, when we had like 50 Popondetta Furcata (which is a pretty energetic fish with good movement) in a 240L tank. The fishes got a shock at water change and 6-8 of them fallen to the ground in a second. In 2-3 seconds! the srimps catched them and they eat them immediatelly! We had 40 large amano shrimps in this tank.

So after a few minutes you only seen the skeleton of these fishes. They just did not had a chance to get out from the shock. I never seen this before, but just with anything else as many tank we have there could be unlimited situations.

So yeah, if you do not feed these shimps and they are in an adult form with a good number of them can make strange things sometimes. Their appetite is huge! But never seen this since that time.
Of course they eat the fallen ones very quickly as they are good housekeepers  but this was probably the most shocking moment what i've seen on this topic.


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## sciencefiction

Thanks Viktor. I actually shocked the fish in one of my tanks like that once via a water change so I could imagine.   I wanted to get some amanos because of their big appetite as I read they are even better than cherries but I think I'll skip as I don't necessarily need them. Just wanted some diversity.
I put a deformed play fry in my cherry shrimp tank that was born like that and couldn't swim, just crawled at the bottom for the most part and I couldn't bring myself to kill it. The cherries certainly didn't attack it even by accident although it couldn't have had a chance against 100 shrimp or more. Probably an amano would have done the "dirty" job for me  The poor fish is refusing to die now for about 8 months but got strong enough to swim up for food.
Thanks all. That was really helpful.


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## Nat N

I agree with Viktor and have something to add as I have kept Amanos in various set ups with different level of success... Amanos normally, although extremely "energetic" do not attack reasonable size fish (in comparison to them) which is in good health and active. They can be intimidating to smaller much gentler fish - even healthy otherwise (like dwarf Corys). So, I would say, to avoid any possible problems, the fish in the tank have to be the size of Amanos or bigger. And, of course, stressing the fish via water changes or any other way should be avoided. It is easily achieved - if you do something big scale during a water change, just take your time and introduce new water gradually over a lengthy period of time as when you are acclimatizing new fish - in any case I believe this is what should be done anyway...


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