I acquired seven of these strange creatures from a hobbyist friend in the early part of 2001. I added them to a 10-gallon aquarium tank with small river rocks as substrate. I filled the tank 2/3 full and added a submergible heater with temperature at 78 degrees. My pH is 7.4 and my water is alkaline. I did add a tablespoon of aquarium salt to this set-up. Lighting was fluorescent. For plants: I added floating plants, duckweed, riccia, and anacharis. I also added a few rocks covered with java moss and three large clumps of java moss that had algae growing on it. I learned from a previous mistake not to fill the tank full as these shrimp are excellent escape artists. I lost 2 from their attempt of escaping the tank.

I contacted my friend and ordered 10 more as I only had 5 left. This shipment provided me with several females that appeared to be carrying eggs. I added these to the tank and within a few days I lost 3 of the shrimp. Leaving me a total of eleven. I knew I had at least four males as I could tell they were different in size and shape then the egg-laden females. I have witnessed the males fighting on occasion and this usually happens prior to mating. I was lucky enough to witness a male and female mate. This usually occurs after a battle among the males and none of the males appeared injured from their battle. The winner would approach the female and then begin to go over her as if he was grooming her for the big event. This continued for several minutes and then he crawled under her and positioned his body aligned to her - front to back and head to head. The female was laden with eggs. After a few minutes he left the female and went about the tank.

Each day as I fed the shrimp, I checked to see if anymore had perished. None had, as I pruned my other planted tanks I would add the algae laden plants to the shrimp tank and within a week the plants were cleaned of all algae. I had added a few Malaysian trumpet and ramshorn snails with the shrimp and all appeared to get along. I did notice the shrimp were eating the smaller ramshorn snails. For food: I used a flake food and twice a week I fed them Hikari crab pellets. You are probably puzzled at why I would feed crab pellets. It's these two ingredients: brewer's yeast and calcium iodate. Crabs, lobsters, crawfish, all require diets rich in calcium for development of their outer shells. Healthy outer shells are an ongoing process to protect them from predators and disease. I have had excellent results with my shrimp shedding and rebuilding their shells. I believe feeding these pellets are one of the keys to keeping and breeding these shrimp.

Every three weeks, I did a 1/3 water change and changed the filter floss and carbon. I did alter the salt percentage at each water change; one would be with a tablespoon of salt and the other with just aged tap water and no salt. Each week, I added more algae plants and left the shrimp to their own device. About two months after receiving the last batch of shrimp a friend of mine was sitting at my kitchen table observing the shrimp tank, which is on a small table that I turned into a tank stand, near my kitchen table. Talk about a great dinner conversation among friends. Like many other hobbyists, I was running out of room for more tanks and now my kitchen was becoming a partial fish room. Suddenly, my friend became excited as she saw baby shrimp in the moss. I didn't believe her and continued cooking dinner. She insisted I quit and come sit by the tank and see for myself. Before long I saw tiny movement in the moss and darting about the tank. I grabbed the magnifying glass and there they were. Miniature shrimp. The tank was full of baby shrimp. As I sat and watched them make hopping movements throughout the tank. I saw something unusual: There were several different sizes. A few were a centimeter and some were smaller and then there were others so small that they appeared to be floating eggs, tiny free floating larvae.

I had read a couple of articles on these shrimp and learned that after breeding and after the eggs hatched, raising the shrimp were difficult. Time would tell if these would live and grow with their parents. Several weeks passed and they continued to grow, but not as much as I expected. I continued to monitor their existence in the tank; so far the parents were not displaying cannibalism, nor were the snails.

One morning I decided to move all to another 10-gallon tank in my spare bedroom. I would have loved to had a spare tank for the babies, but that was not possible. Having 27 other tanks left me little space for another one, so I decided to take the chance that the parents would not cannibalize them. I caught the parents first and then proceeded to remove the babies. A very slow process, many remained attached to the java moss and this was much easier. The hard work came after the rocks and live plants were removed. I tried catching them with a cup, and this worked great until I had removed almost all the water. I discovered, if I left a piece of floating anacharis the shrimp would come and cling to the plant. I would shake the plant over my container. Easy task until I realized the larger ones were hiding in all the mulm on the bottom of the tank. Five hours had passed and my aching back was telling me that this project must soon end. To speed the task, I decided to use my turkey baster. This worked well and soon all were caught. I had stopped counting at one hundred and knew there were probably that many more.

I was afraid the move from one tank to another would cause problems, but after a few days all appeared to be doing well. I continued to feed the same foods, and change a small amount of the water on a three there week schedule, altering the salt content. At this date all are doing well and I have shipped a few dozen small ones to a friend. Shipping was an experiment to see if they would survive, so far all are well. I do add a live plant in the shipping bag, as the shrimp must have something to cling to, if not chances are they will arrive dead. I removed another dozen and placed them in a small tank with cooler water to see if they will survive under these conditions. They have been in this tank for 4 weeks and appear to be doing fine.

My advice to anyone who would like to try spawning these shrimp is to have them in their own species tank, with lots of live plants, the main ones appear to be duckweed and plenty of java moss. There is something about java moss that these shrimp find as a food source. Every few weeks I add more java moss, as it seems to disappear. I also, recommend feeding the Hikarri crab pellets and altering the salt content with each water change as this may imitate their natural breeding habitant. The Amano shrimp is considered to be a great algae eater, but I have discovered they are wonderful creatures to work with and fun to watch.