# amano shrimp eating hairgrass



## Emilio (17 Jun 2018)

hello, i added a few amano shrimp to my aquarium a few days ago,
and i noticed that some of them have been nibbling the tips of my eleocharis hairgrass , which is strange as i didn't think they eat plants ,
could it be that there just hungry as i have not fed them anything yet, and the aquarium is pretty algae free at the moment, not to sure so would appreciate some input, thanks


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## richard brown (18 Jun 2018)

Are the tips of the hairgrass brown?, they tend to eat dead and decaying plant leaves etc.

Just drop a single algae wafer in there.


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## zozo (18 Jun 2018)

There are plenty reports of Amano shrimps eating off the plants.. Tho it's unclear if it's about a type of plant or due to bad plant health.. Personaly i suspect the later when it comes to hair grass. I've kept both together and never experienced them eating the grass. But shrimps eat unhealthy (dying) plant tissue. And for submersed plants it aint always that easy to recognize unhealthy plant tissue before it becomes a hole in the leaf or a part of the leaf missing. In terrestrial plants it generaly shows rather early if a part of a leaf is dying off, in submersed plant this leaf part stays water logged and camouflaged so to say. Than shrimps and or snails just eat it off making it look like mechanical damage.

As richard says, but unhealthy plant tissue making a shrimp or snail snack isn't always per definition showing a clear unhealthy color. And so could be long eaten before it does..


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## Guiller (18 Jun 2018)

My amanos ate voraciously all the alternantera reinickii mini that I had recently planted until there were just bare stems left.


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## Emilio (18 Jun 2018)

from what i can tell the tips are not dead and the hairgrass seems healthy, i keep seeing little strands of hair grass floating to the top of the aquarium I'm not sure if the amanos are causing this because before i added them this didn't happen at all.
which is why I'm not sure if its just that there hungry.
i have some micro fish pellets which i will try add in for them as there is no fish in there at the moment.


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## peaches (12 Jul 2018)

Mine don't but would eat algae off them.  Are they getting enough other stuff to eat?


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## HiNtZ (12 Jul 2018)

The amanos that I captive bred seem to have a taste for hydrocotyle - my wild caught don't like it.

I can literally put a big bunch in the night before, then by morning every single leaf is gone. It's not even like they are hungry, the tank is fed constantly.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (12 Jul 2018)

HiNtZ said:


> The amanos that I captive bred seem to have a taste for hydrocotyle - my wild caught don't like it.



Intriguing, do you have anything in the forum about this?

My Amano and RCS to that matter will attack a failing plant. I had some S.Repens that wasn't doing so well at substrate level and they stripped them. Was also away for a long time without feeding plants and they stripped the pogo erectos to just the stems. Can't say I've seen them attack healthy plants though but mine are well fed. Probably too well fed to be honest, they're doing my nut in at the minute. I put in a fair few small algae wafers which should be more than enough to go round all the shrimp in the tank but the Amano will snatch one a piece and take off with them. They have quite a lot of strength to carry a full one off which is probably about half its body length. Thing is the wafers tend to crumble and fall to bits when they've been in the water a while so hopefully the RCS and CRS get the debris that falls off on to the substrate.


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## HiNtZ (14 Jul 2018)

AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Intriguing, do you have anything in the forum about this?
> 
> My Amano and RCS to that matter will attack a failing plant. I had some S.Repens that wasn't doing so well at substrate level and they stripped them. Was also away for a long time without feeding plants and they stripped the pogo erectos to just the stems. Can't say I've seen them attack healthy plants though but mine are well fed. Probably too well fed to be honest, they're doing my nut in at the minute. I put in a fair few small algae wafers which should be more than enough to go round all the shrimp in the tank but the Amano will snatch one a piece and take off with them. They have quite a lot of strength to carry a full one off which is probably about half its body length. Thing is the wafers tend to crumble and fall to bits when they've been in the water a while so hopefully the RCS and CRS get the debris that falls off on to the substrate.



About breeding or the eating of plants?

If the former, then I believe there are a few threads somewhere discussing the topic.

For what it's worth, I cannot get the success in summer that I do in the winter. This is due to mass deaths of larva, or the females simply will not hatch the eggs. 

If you have the time and patience, we could definitely do with more people trying different things.


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## AverageWhiteBloke (14 Jul 2018)

About breeding, always interested in people's efforts to breed and raise Amano.


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