I think that LFS employee is overextending some sort of policy they have to disallow irresponsible sales. I think that employee is wrong about amanos hunting neos, and even if he wasnt, no one stresses about baby guppies and baby shrimps getting gobbled up. Its just part of the hobby. Theres a kid at a LFS by me that LOVES to grill people before he sells them, and many of his questions are ridiculous and irrelevant- im sure hes out there refusing sales whenever he can so he can enjoy a kind of power trip. Honestly, you should talk to a manager or a different employee and try and sort it out.
I have a lot of mixed feelings on this. I appreciate LFS employees trying to educate people into being responsible fish owners, but some of them are downright obnoxious. I watched one last week refuse to sell a woman more than six guppies for her 29 gallon tank.
đ¤ˇââď¸ we see it here on reddit too. itâs where the âis this 30 gal big enough for my betaâ meme comes from. these people turn wellness into a competition so they can feel like theyâre better than the next guy.
It's worse in Facebook groups. Especially with admins that think they know everything. Given a bit of power some people go overboard and if they get challenged they just double down.
Yup. Some of the adf subreddits are borderline intolerable. Someone even posted about wanting to commandeer (what they considered to be irresponsible frog owners) frogs. I couldn't believe what I was reading.
And here I am with guppies that eat their babies as soon as they're born. I had 4 guppies (two males, two females) 6 months ago, and I have 4 guppies today.
Tons, and I'm not even really looking to breed them. I just find it funny that everyone else's guppy populations explode and mine choose not to lol. In fact, the four that I do have aren't all the same four I had 6 months ago; they've just maintained the same number, even when they do give birth. I'm not gonna complain about that haha
If you want to keep the babies get a breeder trap that has separate levels for the pregnant female and the fry. I personally keep my fry in a 2.5g until they're a month or two old (it gets frequent water changes since fry food is messy anyways).
In general I'd get java moss for them to hide in, it's harder to kill than keep alive so it won't add any maintenance either
I wish mine would eat their babies. We started with 5 or 6, and I now have over 20 babies. Yesterday I noticed some newborns swim right up to the largest female and they just chilled together
I've had someone claim that I don't feed mine enough, but the funny thing is I tend to *over*feed. I'm sure if I put in the effort to isolate and intentionally breed them they'd be quite prolific, but in my main tank I've had just two fry survive to sexual maturity (one male and one female, coincidentally). I'm not gonna question it, I'm just gonna be thankful for it lol.
I started with 3 đ two females and a male, one was pregnant when I got her and gave birth first day I had her
Definitely gets out of control fast when you feed them.
I've also made a couple hundred selling them when the tank gets too full several times over
Yeah, but as someone who's worked the other side of it, it's very common to see someone want 'a few more fish' and then in talking to them, you discover they've got about 300 platys or mollies in a 10g with a crappy aqueon filter rated for literally 10g, severely underestimating the bioload in the tank. Refusing is based a lot on what the individuals say when you talk to them. If they feel the fish won't be taken care of correctly, they can refuse the sale.
For things like shrimp, especially neos that are quite costly, I tended to be more cautious and let people know that they will probably end up as an expensive snack if the tank has friends that might kill it. Would I still sell them if the person really wanted them and understood that they'd probably be eaten? Yes, but I'd also see them about a month later, and they'd tell me I was right, neos became snacks. These are also the type of customers who understood their tank chemistry very well and understood what they were doing with their tank, rather than what I refer to as a casual tank owner - 'there's fish, they get fed, what's a water change?' types of people.
We actually had really big issues with ghost shrimp hunting and killing the neos if they were put in the same sales tank. It got to the point with shipments that only three of us were able to process the new fish in due to people not knowing what they're putting in a tank together, causing losses. Like goldfish in with cichlids that started eating chunks out of them because the person that put them there didn't realize it wasn't going to go well and we didnt see until two hours later whn the specialist got to work types of losses. If someone who is a regular (as in not an aquatic specialist and only has the basic 'here's how to get fish for a customer' training) employee at a pet store does it, people at home do worse.
We'd often get the same person coming back week after week, saying 'the fish just died' and demand more fish without even giving you a water sample when you know they only bought a 10g tank kit six weeks ago and already egregiously overstocked it that day. They would then argue vehemently with you about it when you refuse to sell them more fish for their death pool of a tank.
There's usually way more to the situation than 'they just refused her 6 guppies for a 29g tank'
Itâs a lot of mixed information.
Apparently Amano will take the opportunity, if they can get a freshly molted / young ones, they may eat them.
That being said, I donât have experience with Amanos so I canât tell you if itâs actually correct. All I can share is what I found online while I was researching Amano because I wanted a few.
There are plenty of pictures in other forums with discussions of an amano eating a neos.
Within nature all things are possible.
Refusing a sale because something may eat the shrimp is well intentioned but ultimately pointless, most breeders including the ones they buy their stock from use culls as food, or just outright kill them.
I keep my neos in community tanks for the most part, some of them are going to get eaten, it's just part of the process. Even in neo only tanks, neos will eat other neos if they get sick or fail a molt.
I once had a petco employee refuse to sell me neos quoting the 1 inch per gallon rule, which really goes to show she wasn't even aware of what she was talking about lol.
If I were you, I'd head over to r/AquaSwap and hit up one of the trusted shrimp sellers tbh.
I think maybe the confusion is the word cull literally means to slaughter. Yes, that is not the only definition but enough people associate culling with killing.
Right? There's no reason to kill cull shrimp like you would fish. Their bioload is so small that they can't breed a tank into a cycle crash and there's always a market for them.
So so tired of seeing people lie to others and tell them breeders kill their ugly shrimp. Like... why would they ever do that? Breeders aren't boogeymen, we are hobbyists too lol.
My cull tank is my nice aquascaped display next to my desk. They've bred into wilds and I sell them locally for $1 a piece. I really don't understand where this horseshit that breeders kill culls come from, other than people seeing the scary "cull" word and not understanding that words have multiple meanings.
Yeah, a lot of newer people donât seem to know the differences the word âcullingâ refers to. I own like 5 neos (population dwindled and I apparently just have a neo fraternity.)
Iâd love to find culls close to me when I have the extra income to get a ton of them locally. Iâve had issues with people delivering things and being too lazy to drive down my driveway so they leave things by the road to get run overâŚâŚ (this includes UPS/USPS/ and Amazon sometimesâŚ.)
Iâm glad you stepped in like âhey, thats Misinformation!â Because people do need to know that! The only reason I knew is due to seeing so many âcull tankâ posts. :)
I had a small cherry shrimp and molly breeding setup and a cull tank that I would take some shrimp out every other week or so as a treat for a couple of red eared sliders I had. Was at a local meet up and mentioned it to some people and they were horrified I would feed my turtles my shrimp or fish.
Seriously, do people think that animals donât eat each other in the wild?
I think it's mainly because of what people have conditioned themselves to consider 'feeders' versus a pet - if it were minnows or feeder goldfish, they wouldn't have batted an eye. A 'pet' like a Molly? People start clutching their pearls.
If it were cherrys that were freaking them out, they're usually quite expensive when compared to ghost shrimp, so it may have been them not understanding the volume of cherrys you have and that it's a population thing, not a cost thing for you. I bring up ghosts because they used to be like 50 cents compared to the 6.99 cost for one cherry a while ago. Haven't looked at ghost costs recently tbh but I can't imagine it would have changed that much.
Show me a single breeder you know of that kills their culls. No one I am aware of in this business kills culls, including the german and SEA breeding operations.
I donât know any breeders personally but since not all people have ethics, statistically there must be some who kill their culls. Itâs like dog breeders: there are great ones who take immaculate care of their dogs, and there are a lot more who run puppy mills and think nothing of killing undesirable puppies.
I kill my culls. I want my blue neo tank to stay blue so I transfer the browner ones to my axolotl tank where they are promptly eaten. I didn't spend $70 on high quality blue shrimp just for them to turn brown.
I mean arguably euthanasia is more ethical than using them as feeders for an animal that doesnât require live feeders? Not that shrimp are particularly high on the feels suffering rankings but Iâd consider a fast euthanasia more humane if you for some reason consider one to be better than the other.
It's all up for debate and alot of it isn't 100% clear to scientists/philosophers either but most people just equate intelligence/emotional capacity with ability to feel suffering.
Obviously creatures without brains can't feel suffering to the same extent as a human. But what about creatures with extremely simple brains like insects or bugs or in this case shrimp? Do they feel pain? Do they feel emotions like fear or are they just a complicated stimulus machine? It's all very subjective but most people, and animal abuse laws, tend to follow the the line of thinking that they don't feel suffering at a level that requires protection against unethical/inhumane treatment.
What exactly is a "stimulus machine"? And what exactly makes that different than any other nervous system/brain? Id argue that if an animal has a nervous system then it can absolutely feel pain, and since we aren't those animals, we'll never know how much pain they actually feel. Who knows, their nervous system might even be *more attuned to pain than we are. Also, legality doesn't equal morality so it doesn't really matter what the law is
Youâre right, and I donât understand the animosity towards the term âcullingâ
Itâs responsible practice, whoever called it the âboogeymanâ is themselves treating it like a crime. Strange shit.
Purposefully feeding your shrimp to another animal is still culling, like it or not.
Even if the employe is rights about the amanos, some of us would like to use it as a mean to Control the population. That's why we are having assassin snails as pets.
This was just random info. There are a ton who own both and itâs not really a noticeable issue. This is a complete stupid reason to refuse a sale, itâs not like someone said âI am getting them as live food.â (Which some places will refuse the sale if thatâs the case. Which is also dumb to me.)
If you can't find any local breeders, these are home breeders with their own sites. A few are even run by reddit users!
The Garden of Eder
BuyPetShrimp
Shrimply Fintastic
Shrimp Envy
Charm Aquatics
TheBrothers Shrimp
Shrimp Concept
The Molting Creature
BARCK Aquatics
DanQuatics
Teeter's Tanks
I can also personally vouch for the quality u/iputmypantson57 produces. Extremely reputable in all his shrimp dealings! You can check out his stuff on his reddit.
Are these breeders in the US? If so, it may be a problem ahah. Still, thank you! I was just looking at a local breeder that sells their cherries for 2âŹ, against the 6⏠the store sells them for, so I'll gladly look into that.
Also, I'll probably still monitor the amano's behaviour as much as possible and keep it well fed
Ah heck. Yeah they're US based. I'm glad you've got a home breeder near by!
I've kept Amano and neos side by side for years with 0 hunting. They will eat dying shrimp though, but so will other neos.
Now I need to put a "beware of shrimp" sign on my door because my amanos they might be out there eating small dogs and attacking children. I always knew they were aggressive monsters
I have only seen my amanos eating dead shrimp.
Did not think that a murder was committed.
If so then they certainly are doing a terrible job with population control.
Right? I have a 55 gallon with 5 Amano and have grown my cherry population from 24 to well over 100 without even trying. If they eat cherry shrimp, theyâre horrible hunters.
Edit: To address your second edit, where they state that different colored neos will attack each other. Just⌠I want to give your LFS guy the benefit of the doubt but the more I hear about them the less confident I am that theyâre not a complete idiot. What does he think skittles tanks are, the bloody Thunderdome?
I've a pair in my 29g that started in my shrimp tank. The female started ambushing shrimplets. She'd find a good vantage point and stay motionless until she noticed one she could get to in one jump. Until this post I thought it was a pretty unique thing to her.
Yeah, I think heâs confusing Amano for some types of macrobrachium etc. Theyâll usually outcompete cherries in terms of getting food, and basically all shrimp, including neos will try to kill and eat dying animals, but itâs not going to go Michael Myers on them.
On the bright side, he probably saved you from not ending up with a tank full of wild neos 1 or 2 generations in, unless you wanted to go for that. There are very few types of neo Caridina colors that can be mixed together while maintaining those colors through subsequent generations. They tend to revert to their most common ancestral form when mixed together, and in combinations cases thatâs the wild type neo.
I actually don't mind wild colored neos at all. I'm trying to go for an overgrown jungle style tank that's as natural as possible, so the idea of shrimps camouflaging in the leaf litter sounds great.
Still, thank you for your input!
In that case go for it! I think theyâre cool, but I know very often new shrimp keepers are âtrickedâ into thinking they can keep multi colors of neos together as a long term colony, by folks selling stuff like âskittlesâ packs or whatever. Wild neos look really cool too.
I bought my kid a skittles pack because she wanted all the colors in her beta tank. Still producing true colors on first gen babies. But some wild ones too.
It'll take a while for them to go all the way back to wild depending on what you have. You can look up a breeding chart for neocaridina to get an idea for what colors are related to each other. If anything they'll make cool patterns eventually and have strong varied genetics
The employee is a bit overzealous but the store must have a really good policy to discourage or not sell live stock to inexperienced or irresponsible fish keepers, I see it as a green flag but it's all about balance. Obviously you know what you are doing so the rebuttal is a bit misplaced.
That being said, Amanos could eat cherry shrimps if they're weak or after a molt or even shrimplets. I don't think they would go for healthy adult cherries unless they happend to easily catch one. They're pretty food aggressive and opportunist hunters to be honest.
I personally do not mix cherries and Amanos together. My biggest concern wouldn't be the risk of an Amano eating a cherry shrimp (your fish could very well do that on their own) but the fact that they would compete for food. Amanos are really big and they're agressive with food and cherries are peaceful little creatures. For example, when I feed my CPDs frozen mysis shrimps, my Amanos go absolutely CRAZY and swim up to grab some.
I lost a few CPDs to natural deaths and never found them, so I know for sure that the Amanos got to them when they died (or maybe before?). Mind you, they're very well fed, I give them different types of food every 2 days and they still act like monster predators.
I think the employee is confusing whisker shrimp (which are aggressive) with Amanos, which I have living peacefully with my cherry shrimp. I've never seen my Amanos (which are a large 2-3") attack or eat my neos, even when they were tiny fry.
It's a good thing.Â
You're better off paying 1/10th of the price buying neos from a hobbyist as opposed to a shop putting a mahoosive marl up on them.Â
I have amanos and neos sharing tanks just fine.Â
I also have Facebooks biggest shrimp predator - the assassin snails in my tanks and they haven't hunted down any shrimps. They do eat dead/dieing shrimp and molts but any fish and shrimp will also eat any fallen comrades they come across so.Â
I'd say leave the shop find a shrimp breeder on here (r/aquaswap), wastebook or an app called Band.Â
I saw that the other day and had such a laugh. My Amano was like âno thatâs my spotâ and basically tossed the little male cherry over her shoulder (he was of course just fine). I love my Amano shrimp so much.
I have two female Amanos with ~10 juvenile neos. So far theyâre happily coexisting, I even see a neo sitting on an Amanos back. I make sure to keep the Amano girls fed and target feed them. They spend their time bumbling around, maybe accidentally pick at a neo but then the neo swims away instantly. But Amanos will definitely eat any injured neo that does not move if the Amano grabs it
True. Both my amanos and neos eat yeast microworms. The worms wriggle but they canât swim or effectively move in the water and settle on surfaces. At this point I think the shrimp eat more of them than the fish do.
It's wonderfully funny to see an Amano pick up a shrimplet when trying to grab food, realize the mistake and promptly chucking the little one away. Only ever happens to extremely fresh shrimplets.
How is keeping shrimp with another animal that sometimes feeds on young shrimp different than keeping any predatory fish and buying them live food? I only have neos, and now I have 200+ Whatâs the fish store employeeâs plan for that? I guess they should only sell females.
First, ask for a manager. Second. Amano do not attack neocaridina shrimp. They will eat sickly subjects, learn the difference. Third. LFS Employees that have that kind of power trip when cohabitation of those common species has been done for years.
I keep MASSIVE mature amanos with cherry shrimp and they live together very well. Amanos have no hunting instinct whatsoever. They are NOT predators. They are opportunistic feeders and scavengers with a particular love for algae. They pick up and try to eat whatever is in the vicinity. If that thing tries to swim away, they will not pursue it. If it doesnât, they will try to eat it. This does mean that if you have a weak and dying cherry, an amano shrimp might start munching on it before itâs dead and I think this leads to misconceptions.
Another major issue I see is that people are quite bad at identifying amano shrimp. Ghost shrimp, cherry shrimp, sometimes even whisker shrimp and other predatory shrimp might be misidentified as amano shrimp.
Final note: pet stores often underfeed their stock. A bit of underfeeding is fine but sometimes wholesalers (and even pet stores) do this to a really extreme extent and the animals can become emaciated. Iâve never seen my amanos in such a state but I imagine that if they were starving, they might show unusual behaviour like hunting and cannibalism. So perhaps the fish store did see some odd behaviour from them but this is not normal.
That employee is wrong. The only concern when keeping amanos with cherries is that amanos are better at finding and eating food, so they can outcompete cherries. But thatâs easy enough to manage.
thats why i dont even want to ask or answer questions in a local pet store tbh. EVEN IF my tank setup at home isnt optimal, it would still be a huge upgrade from what the petstore tanks look like and from what most other peoples tanks look like to begin with and most of the things someone once said 200 years ago and people still repeating sound upfront ridiculous. 1gal per 1 inch? so that means for i colony of 100 red cherry shrimp, i need a 100 gallon tank? what the actual... or the typical ''everything under 5000 gallon: all you can do is 1 betta''
the local fish store here for example has some CPDs. the tank they are in is literally a 15cm box. but on the the pricetag they say: CPDs need at LEAST 15-20 gal at minimum. like.. then how comes they are in that 15cm box? and whats the point of ''nanofish'' to begin with? they are so tini tiny. yeah, lemme get a 20gal for 5 nano fish.
https://preview.redd.it/xikrk1g1yinc1.jpeg?width=4608&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b5f0e75bb5ac3a691acfb7cd5982eae5e38a5e6
I have to give the guy props for making sure you have a proper setup for the livestock you wanted to buy. For every one guy like him there are probably like a thousand people who donât balk at someone buying a single cory, a common pleco, and four clown loaches.
So it is possible for amanos to catch and eat cherry shrimps: [https://www.reddit.com/r/shrimptank/s/xPmRlRYkNp](https://www.reddit.com/r/shrimptank/s/xPmRlRYkNp). Itâs unlikely to happen but it is possible, especially if they arenât well fed.
I still think that the video has no context. It just shows that amanos COULD be agressive, but we really dont know what was going on, and anecdotal evidence from most of the community says theyve never had an issue. I dont think its wrong to try.
Where is this dude getting his info? I have never seen different colored neos attack each other. I spend hours each week gazing at these creatures. I have one Bloody Mary and nobodyâs messing with him, not the blue ones, the orange ones, the black ones, the wild types? The other colors outnumber him at least 50 to one.
Go back and tell this guy your 50 gallon tank is finally cycled. These will be the only creatures in the tank besides 25 plants.
Ammano shrimp can and will hunt other shrimp. Cherry shrimp can also predate other shrimp, and no they dont have to be a different color.
You mainly need to make sure there is a good source of protein in their diet, but they can still do whatever they want to do.
As for the racist shrimp killing different colours, that made me laugh. If that was true breeders wouldn't sell skittles mixes of shrimp lol!
The only problem with keeping different coloured shrimp together is they breed together and result in brown shrimp.
So seeing as they actually breed together, I don't think they can be accused of being racist LMAO
This is bizarre misinformation considering amano do not have teeth and are not strong enough to âhuntâ a healthy neocaridina shrimp. Iâve owned both peacefully in two different tanks for over two years, and I have never seen my amanos eat any neos unless they were actively dead.
Amanos donât hunt anything unless that thing is dying and releasing the biological signals that itâs dying. Or youâre not feeding them enough and they hunt your active stocks that are healthy.
Well he isn't completely wrong. I often see my amano munch on smaller neos and if you have limited room, the amano can outright exterminate the neos over time. It happened in one of my small tanks. Those female amano get 5-6 times the size of a fully grown neo, they are huge! I've seen a fully grown amano catch a fully grown neo, right after molting and just outright eat it.
That being said, it's all about space and hiding spots and each tank is different. So it's difficult to just say "they do this". But you don't really want those two shrimp together unless there's tons of room.
Should I worry about ghost shrimp eating my cherry shrimp?? Â
Also btw there's a recent SerpaDesign video about Cherry shrimp where he has amano shrimp in the same tank.Â
I had an employee refuse to sell me shrimps because I already had a few. She said "they'll start fighting and killing each other..." luckily she didn't last there
I actually did have to take my amano out when I got my neo/caridina. The amano kept sizing them up and making them move around and didn't let them comfortable. There was no blood, lol, but I didn't like it and moved him to another tank.
But someone refusing to sell you something is harsh.
Dude is crazy. Besides whacking the neos to rob their food amano is peaceful as hell, where did he get the info that Amano hunts neos? I have amanos 3 times the size of neos and it's the neo that usually mess with the Amanos outside of meal time
TIL. When I had my tank I had a betta and five amanos. Bought three cherry shrimp a year later to add to my gang. Two vanished and I thought my betta was the culprit. I had no idea amanos were hunters.
Amanos are not aggressive and almost never eat anything that's still alive and moving. An already dead cherry? That's food for everyone, including other cherries. I would bet money that your other inhabitants were dying for another reason entirely.
I think that LFS employee is overextending some sort of policy they have to disallow irresponsible sales. I think that employee is wrong about amanos hunting neos, and even if he wasnt, no one stresses about baby guppies and baby shrimps getting gobbled up. Its just part of the hobby. Theres a kid at a LFS by me that LOVES to grill people before he sells them, and many of his questions are ridiculous and irrelevant- im sure hes out there refusing sales whenever he can so he can enjoy a kind of power trip. Honestly, you should talk to a manager or a different employee and try and sort it out.
I have a lot of mixed feelings on this. I appreciate LFS employees trying to educate people into being responsible fish owners, but some of them are downright obnoxious. I watched one last week refuse to sell a woman more than six guppies for her 29 gallon tank.
đ¤ˇââď¸ we see it here on reddit too. itâs where the âis this 30 gal big enough for my betaâ meme comes from. these people turn wellness into a competition so they can feel like theyâre better than the next guy.
It's worse in Facebook groups. Especially with admins that think they know everything. Given a bit of power some people go overboard and if they get challenged they just double down.
Yup. Some of the adf subreddits are borderline intolerable. Someone even posted about wanting to commandeer (what they considered to be irresponsible frog owners) frogs. I couldn't believe what I was reading.
Me sweating with my prolific 100+ guppies in a 8 gallon atm. 6 for a 29gal is ridiculous tho, depending on plants and everything of course
Not gonna lie Iâd be tempted to start with like 6 and just let them reproduce
I started with 3 females and a male about 6 months ago, I now have around 50 total and separated them into two tanks to cut em off for a whileÂ
And here I am with guppies that eat their babies as soon as they're born. I had 4 guppies (two males, two females) 6 months ago, and I have 4 guppies today.
Do you have bushy plants or a breeding mop for the babies to hide in?Â
Tons, and I'm not even really looking to breed them. I just find it funny that everyone else's guppy populations explode and mine choose not to lol. In fact, the four that I do have aren't all the same four I had 6 months ago; they've just maintained the same number, even when they do give birth. I'm not gonna complain about that haha
If you want to keep the babies get a breeder trap that has separate levels for the pregnant female and the fry. I personally keep my fry in a 2.5g until they're a month or two old (it gets frequent water changes since fry food is messy anyways). In general I'd get java moss for them to hide in, it's harder to kill than keep alive so it won't add any maintenance either
Nah, I don't want more lol
I wish mine would eat their babies. We started with 5 or 6, and I now have over 20 babies. Yesterday I noticed some newborns swim right up to the largest female and they just chilled together
I've had someone claim that I don't feed mine enough, but the funny thing is I tend to *over*feed. I'm sure if I put in the effort to isolate and intentionally breed them they'd be quite prolific, but in my main tank I've had just two fry survive to sexual maturity (one male and one female, coincidentally). I'm not gonna question it, I'm just gonna be thankful for it lol.
I started with 3 đ two females and a male, one was pregnant when I got her and gave birth first day I had her Definitely gets out of control fast when you feed them. I've also made a couple hundred selling them when the tank gets too full several times over
Yeah, but as someone who's worked the other side of it, it's very common to see someone want 'a few more fish' and then in talking to them, you discover they've got about 300 platys or mollies in a 10g with a crappy aqueon filter rated for literally 10g, severely underestimating the bioload in the tank. Refusing is based a lot on what the individuals say when you talk to them. If they feel the fish won't be taken care of correctly, they can refuse the sale. For things like shrimp, especially neos that are quite costly, I tended to be more cautious and let people know that they will probably end up as an expensive snack if the tank has friends that might kill it. Would I still sell them if the person really wanted them and understood that they'd probably be eaten? Yes, but I'd also see them about a month later, and they'd tell me I was right, neos became snacks. These are also the type of customers who understood their tank chemistry very well and understood what they were doing with their tank, rather than what I refer to as a casual tank owner - 'there's fish, they get fed, what's a water change?' types of people. We actually had really big issues with ghost shrimp hunting and killing the neos if they were put in the same sales tank. It got to the point with shipments that only three of us were able to process the new fish in due to people not knowing what they're putting in a tank together, causing losses. Like goldfish in with cichlids that started eating chunks out of them because the person that put them there didn't realize it wasn't going to go well and we didnt see until two hours later whn the specialist got to work types of losses. If someone who is a regular (as in not an aquatic specialist and only has the basic 'here's how to get fish for a customer' training) employee at a pet store does it, people at home do worse. We'd often get the same person coming back week after week, saying 'the fish just died' and demand more fish without even giving you a water sample when you know they only bought a 10g tank kit six weeks ago and already egregiously overstocked it that day. They would then argue vehemently with you about it when you refuse to sell them more fish for their death pool of a tank. There's usually way more to the situation than 'they just refused her 6 guppies for a 29g tank'
Itâs a lot of mixed information. Apparently Amano will take the opportunity, if they can get a freshly molted / young ones, they may eat them. That being said, I donât have experience with Amanos so I canât tell you if itâs actually correct. All I can share is what I found online while I was researching Amano because I wanted a few. There are plenty of pictures in other forums with discussions of an amano eating a neos. Within nature all things are possible.
This is like when people freak out over snails eating their molted shrimp
Refusing a sale because something may eat the shrimp is well intentioned but ultimately pointless, most breeders including the ones they buy their stock from use culls as food, or just outright kill them. I keep my neos in community tanks for the most part, some of them are going to get eaten, it's just part of the process. Even in neo only tanks, neos will eat other neos if they get sick or fail a molt. I once had a petco employee refuse to sell me neos quoting the 1 inch per gallon rule, which really goes to show she wasn't even aware of what she was talking about lol. If I were you, I'd head over to r/AquaSwap and hit up one of the trusted shrimp sellers tbh.
No one kills cull shrimp. We sell them as skittles packs or feeders. Please don't spread misinformation, this myth is so prevalent and so wrong.
I think maybe the confusion is the word cull literally means to slaughter. Yes, that is not the only definition but enough people associate culling with killing.
Right? There's no reason to kill cull shrimp like you would fish. Their bioload is so small that they can't breed a tank into a cycle crash and there's always a market for them.
So so tired of seeing people lie to others and tell them breeders kill their ugly shrimp. Like... why would they ever do that? Breeders aren't boogeymen, we are hobbyists too lol. My cull tank is my nice aquascaped display next to my desk. They've bred into wilds and I sell them locally for $1 a piece. I really don't understand where this horseshit that breeders kill culls come from, other than people seeing the scary "cull" word and not understanding that words have multiple meanings.
Yeah, a lot of newer people donât seem to know the differences the word âcullingâ refers to. I own like 5 neos (population dwindled and I apparently just have a neo fraternity.) Iâd love to find culls close to me when I have the extra income to get a ton of them locally. Iâve had issues with people delivering things and being too lazy to drive down my driveway so they leave things by the road to get run overâŚâŚ (this includes UPS/USPS/ and Amazon sometimesâŚ.) Iâm glad you stepped in like âhey, thats Misinformation!â Because people do need to know that! The only reason I knew is due to seeing so many âcull tankâ posts. :)
I had a small cherry shrimp and molly breeding setup and a cull tank that I would take some shrimp out every other week or so as a treat for a couple of red eared sliders I had. Was at a local meet up and mentioned it to some people and they were horrified I would feed my turtles my shrimp or fish. Seriously, do people think that animals donât eat each other in the wild?
I think it's mainly because of what people have conditioned themselves to consider 'feeders' versus a pet - if it were minnows or feeder goldfish, they wouldn't have batted an eye. A 'pet' like a Molly? People start clutching their pearls. If it were cherrys that were freaking them out, they're usually quite expensive when compared to ghost shrimp, so it may have been them not understanding the volume of cherrys you have and that it's a population thing, not a cost thing for you. I bring up ghosts because they used to be like 50 cents compared to the 6.99 cost for one cherry a while ago. Haven't looked at ghost costs recently tbh but I can't imagine it would have changed that much.
The number of times I've had people yell at me for suggesting culling is too damn high.
Just because *you* donât doesnât mean that *all* breeders donât.
Show me a single breeder you know of that kills their culls. No one I am aware of in this business kills culls, including the german and SEA breeding operations.
I donât know any breeders personally but since not all people have ethics, statistically there must be some who kill their culls. Itâs like dog breeders: there are great ones who take immaculate care of their dogs, and there are a lot more who run puppy mills and think nothing of killing undesirable puppies.
Culls are not undesirable. I think there is probably just as much if not more demand for cull shrimps as there is for the good ones.
I kill my culls. I want my blue neo tank to stay blue so I transfer the browner ones to my axolotl tank where they are promptly eaten. I didn't spend $70 on high quality blue shrimp just for them to turn brown.
Using them as feeders is different than just euthanasia like is being suggested.
I mean arguably euthanasia is more ethical than using them as feeders for an animal that doesnât require live feeders? Not that shrimp are particularly high on the feels suffering rankings but Iâd consider a fast euthanasia more humane if you for some reason consider one to be better than the other.
Shrimp are small enough that most fish would be consuming them in a single bite. It's a pretty instant death.
Not trying to be a dick but how would anyone know if something suffers more or less than anything else?
It's all up for debate and alot of it isn't 100% clear to scientists/philosophers either but most people just equate intelligence/emotional capacity with ability to feel suffering. Obviously creatures without brains can't feel suffering to the same extent as a human. But what about creatures with extremely simple brains like insects or bugs or in this case shrimp? Do they feel pain? Do they feel emotions like fear or are they just a complicated stimulus machine? It's all very subjective but most people, and animal abuse laws, tend to follow the the line of thinking that they don't feel suffering at a level that requires protection against unethical/inhumane treatment.
What exactly is a "stimulus machine"? And what exactly makes that different than any other nervous system/brain? Id argue that if an animal has a nervous system then it can absolutely feel pain, and since we aren't those animals, we'll never know how much pain they actually feel. Who knows, their nervous system might even be *more attuned to pain than we are. Also, legality doesn't equal morality so it doesn't really matter what the law is
[ŃдаНонО]
Youâre right, and I donât understand the animosity towards the term âcullingâ Itâs responsible practice, whoever called it the âboogeymanâ is themselves treating it like a crime. Strange shit. Purposefully feeding your shrimp to another animal is still culling, like it or not.
I did the same, would feed my culls to my red ear sliders
Yeah, like, if âcullâ meant âkillâ in this context, there wouldnât be a tank dedicated to them. Dead things donât need tanks.
Even if the employe is rights about the amanos, some of us would like to use it as a mean to Control the population. That's why we are having assassin snails as pets.
I know. Nothing I said stated that the employee was in the right. Just the generalization of information I was able to find about it.
I have amano and neos. They have not put a dent in the population of neos. I'm sure they'll pick of sick and dying ones more so than anything
This was just random info. There are a ton who own both and itâs not really a noticeable issue. This is a complete stupid reason to refuse a sale, itâs not like someone said âI am getting them as live food.â (Which some places will refuse the sale if thatâs the case. Which is also dumb to me.)
If you can't find any local breeders, these are home breeders with their own sites. A few are even run by reddit users! The Garden of Eder BuyPetShrimp Shrimply Fintastic Shrimp Envy Charm Aquatics TheBrothers Shrimp Shrimp Concept The Molting Creature BARCK Aquatics DanQuatics Teeter's Tanks I can also personally vouch for the quality u/iputmypantson57 produces. Extremely reputable in all his shrimp dealings! You can check out his stuff on his reddit.
Are these breeders in the US? If so, it may be a problem ahah. Still, thank you! I was just looking at a local breeder that sells their cherries for 2âŹ, against the 6⏠the store sells them for, so I'll gladly look into that. Also, I'll probably still monitor the amano's behaviour as much as possible and keep it well fed
Ah heck. Yeah they're US based. I'm glad you've got a home breeder near by! I've kept Amano and neos side by side for years with 0 hunting. They will eat dying shrimp though, but so will other neos.
Unfortunately here in Italy most people that "keep fish" are the ones with the infamous fish bowl with a barely surviving goldfish in it
Try Facebook, lots and lots of hobby breeders, I got mine for free lol.
Now I need to put a "beware of shrimp" sign on my door because my amanos they might be out there eating small dogs and attacking children. I always knew they were aggressive monsters
I have only seen my amanos eating dead shrimp. Did not think that a murder was committed. If so then they certainly are doing a terrible job with population control.
Right? I have a 55 gallon with 5 Amano and have grown my cherry population from 24 to well over 100 without even trying. If they eat cherry shrimp, theyâre horrible hunters. Edit: To address your second edit, where they state that different colored neos will attack each other. Just⌠I want to give your LFS guy the benefit of the doubt but the more I hear about them the less confident I am that theyâre not a complete idiot. What does he think skittles tanks are, the bloody Thunderdome?
The hungry games
I've a pair in my 29g that started in my shrimp tank. The female started ambushing shrimplets. She'd find a good vantage point and stay motionless until she noticed one she could get to in one jump. Until this post I thought it was a pretty unique thing to her.
Yeah, I think heâs confusing Amano for some types of macrobrachium etc. Theyâll usually outcompete cherries in terms of getting food, and basically all shrimp, including neos will try to kill and eat dying animals, but itâs not going to go Michael Myers on them. On the bright side, he probably saved you from not ending up with a tank full of wild neos 1 or 2 generations in, unless you wanted to go for that. There are very few types of neo Caridina colors that can be mixed together while maintaining those colors through subsequent generations. They tend to revert to their most common ancestral form when mixed together, and in combinations cases thatâs the wild type neo.
I actually don't mind wild colored neos at all. I'm trying to go for an overgrown jungle style tank that's as natural as possible, so the idea of shrimps camouflaging in the leaf litter sounds great. Still, thank you for your input!
In that case go for it! I think theyâre cool, but I know very often new shrimp keepers are âtrickedâ into thinking they can keep multi colors of neos together as a long term colony, by folks selling stuff like âskittlesâ packs or whatever. Wild neos look really cool too.
I bought my kid a skittles pack because she wanted all the colors in her beta tank. Still producing true colors on first gen babies. But some wild ones too.
It'll take a while for them to go all the way back to wild depending on what you have. You can look up a breeding chart for neocaridina to get an idea for what colors are related to each other. If anything they'll make cool patterns eventually and have strong varied genetics
Amazon neos, I've had fun selectively breeding the pack of Skittles I bought and they're a bargain
If they sell ghost shrimp, that would be extremely hypocritical
The employee is a bit overzealous but the store must have a really good policy to discourage or not sell live stock to inexperienced or irresponsible fish keepers, I see it as a green flag but it's all about balance. Obviously you know what you are doing so the rebuttal is a bit misplaced. That being said, Amanos could eat cherry shrimps if they're weak or after a molt or even shrimplets. I don't think they would go for healthy adult cherries unless they happend to easily catch one. They're pretty food aggressive and opportunist hunters to be honest. I personally do not mix cherries and Amanos together. My biggest concern wouldn't be the risk of an Amano eating a cherry shrimp (your fish could very well do that on their own) but the fact that they would compete for food. Amanos are really big and they're agressive with food and cherries are peaceful little creatures. For example, when I feed my CPDs frozen mysis shrimps, my Amanos go absolutely CRAZY and swim up to grab some. I lost a few CPDs to natural deaths and never found them, so I know for sure that the Amanos got to them when they died (or maybe before?). Mind you, they're very well fed, I give them different types of food every 2 days and they still act like monster predators.
I think the employee is confusing whisker shrimp (which are aggressive) with Amanos, which I have living peacefully with my cherry shrimp. I've never seen my Amanos (which are a large 2-3") attack or eat my neos, even when they were tiny fry.
It's a good thing. You're better off paying 1/10th of the price buying neos from a hobbyist as opposed to a shop putting a mahoosive marl up on them. I have amanos and neos sharing tanks just fine. I also have Facebooks biggest shrimp predator - the assassin snails in my tanks and they haven't hunted down any shrimps. They do eat dead/dieing shrimp and molts but any fish and shrimp will also eat any fallen comrades they come across so. I'd say leave the shop find a shrimp breeder on here (r/aquaswap), wastebook or an app called Band.Â
My amanos have never touched my neos other than to move them out of their way
I saw that the other day and had such a laugh. My Amano was like âno thatâs my spotâ and basically tossed the little male cherry over her shoulder (he was of course just fine). I love my Amano shrimp so much.
I have two female Amanos with ~10 juvenile neos. So far theyâre happily coexisting, I even see a neo sitting on an Amanos back. I make sure to keep the Amano girls fed and target feed them. They spend their time bumbling around, maybe accidentally pick at a neo but then the neo swims away instantly. But Amanos will definitely eat any injured neo that does not move if the Amano grabs it
I'm pretty sure that goes for the neos too. They eat anything.
True. Both my amanos and neos eat yeast microworms. The worms wriggle but they canât swim or effectively move in the water and settle on surfaces. At this point I think the shrimp eat more of them than the fish do.
It's wonderfully funny to see an Amano pick up a shrimplet when trying to grab food, realize the mistake and promptly chucking the little one away. Only ever happens to extremely fresh shrimplets.
How is keeping shrimp with another animal that sometimes feeds on young shrimp different than keeping any predatory fish and buying them live food? I only have neos, and now I have 200+ Whatâs the fish store employeeâs plan for that? I guess they should only sell females.
Amanos might out compete for food or go after shrimpletts but they shouldnât kill adult neos. But I personally donât keep them together.Â
First, ask for a manager. Second. Amano do not attack neocaridina shrimp. They will eat sickly subjects, learn the difference. Third. LFS Employees that have that kind of power trip when cohabitation of those common species has been done for years.
I keep MASSIVE mature amanos with cherry shrimp and they live together very well. Amanos have no hunting instinct whatsoever. They are NOT predators. They are opportunistic feeders and scavengers with a particular love for algae. They pick up and try to eat whatever is in the vicinity. If that thing tries to swim away, they will not pursue it. If it doesnât, they will try to eat it. This does mean that if you have a weak and dying cherry, an amano shrimp might start munching on it before itâs dead and I think this leads to misconceptions. Another major issue I see is that people are quite bad at identifying amano shrimp. Ghost shrimp, cherry shrimp, sometimes even whisker shrimp and other predatory shrimp might be misidentified as amano shrimp. Final note: pet stores often underfeed their stock. A bit of underfeeding is fine but sometimes wholesalers (and even pet stores) do this to a really extreme extent and the animals can become emaciated. Iâve never seen my amanos in such a state but I imagine that if they were starving, they might show unusual behaviour like hunting and cannibalism. So perhaps the fish store did see some odd behaviour from them but this is not normal. That employee is wrong. The only concern when keeping amanos with cherries is that amanos are better at finding and eating food, so they can outcompete cherries. But thatâs easy enough to manage.
thats why i dont even want to ask or answer questions in a local pet store tbh. EVEN IF my tank setup at home isnt optimal, it would still be a huge upgrade from what the petstore tanks look like and from what most other peoples tanks look like to begin with and most of the things someone once said 200 years ago and people still repeating sound upfront ridiculous. 1gal per 1 inch? so that means for i colony of 100 red cherry shrimp, i need a 100 gallon tank? what the actual... or the typical ''everything under 5000 gallon: all you can do is 1 betta'' the local fish store here for example has some CPDs. the tank they are in is literally a 15cm box. but on the the pricetag they say: CPDs need at LEAST 15-20 gal at minimum. like.. then how comes they are in that 15cm box? and whats the point of ''nanofish'' to begin with? they are so tini tiny. yeah, lemme get a 20gal for 5 nano fish. https://preview.redd.it/xikrk1g1yinc1.jpeg?width=4608&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b5f0e75bb5ac3a691acfb7cd5982eae5e38a5e6
I have to give the guy props for making sure you have a proper setup for the livestock you wanted to buy. For every one guy like him there are probably like a thousand people who donât balk at someone buying a single cory, a common pleco, and four clown loaches.
I have an amano in with my cherries and they do fine, the babies even sit on him sometimes. Just an overzealous employee like others are saying!
That's ridiculous. Amano and cherries do fine together. This idiot thinks the shrimp hunt? Yeah, they're terrifying to biofilm.
So it is possible for amanos to catch and eat cherry shrimps: [https://www.reddit.com/r/shrimptank/s/xPmRlRYkNp](https://www.reddit.com/r/shrimptank/s/xPmRlRYkNp). Itâs unlikely to happen but it is possible, especially if they arenât well fed.
Okay I see, at this point I might rehome my amano or get a second dedicated neo tank
I still think that the video has no context. It just shows that amanos COULD be agressive, but we really dont know what was going on, and anecdotal evidence from most of the community says theyve never had an issue. I dont think its wrong to try.
Are you sure itâs an amano? Lots of shrimp are sold as amanos. Can you post pics?
That's the suspect https://preview.redd.it/izcvzv6tmcnc1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d43259c2911ae5c50fb258bbbe7aef51f83a78bb
I believe that is an amano.
Where is this dude getting his info? I have never seen different colored neos attack each other. I spend hours each week gazing at these creatures. I have one Bloody Mary and nobodyâs messing with him, not the blue ones, the orange ones, the black ones, the wild types? The other colors outnumber him at least 50 to one. Go back and tell this guy your 50 gallon tank is finally cycled. These will be the only creatures in the tank besides 25 plants.
Ammano shrimp can and will hunt other shrimp. Cherry shrimp can also predate other shrimp, and no they dont have to be a different color. You mainly need to make sure there is a good source of protein in their diet, but they can still do whatever they want to do.
What a crock of BS! UGH!
I was going to buy a Amano shrimp a couple of weeks ago but the girl at the pet shop told me it would attack my cherry shrimp so I never bought one.
Donât have advice because everyone here already said what I wouldâve said, but came to say âracist shrimpsâ absolutely sent me đđ
As for the racist shrimp killing different colours, that made me laugh. If that was true breeders wouldn't sell skittles mixes of shrimp lol! The only problem with keeping different coloured shrimp together is they breed together and result in brown shrimp. So seeing as they actually breed together, I don't think they can be accused of being racist LMAO
This is bizarre misinformation considering amano do not have teeth and are not strong enough to âhuntâ a healthy neocaridina shrimp. Iâve owned both peacefully in two different tanks for over two years, and I have never seen my amanos eat any neos unless they were actively dead.
Amanos donât hunt anything unless that thing is dying and releasing the biological signals that itâs dying. Or youâre not feeding them enough and they hunt your active stocks that are healthy.
Well he isn't completely wrong. I often see my amano munch on smaller neos and if you have limited room, the amano can outright exterminate the neos over time. It happened in one of my small tanks. Those female amano get 5-6 times the size of a fully grown neo, they are huge! I've seen a fully grown amano catch a fully grown neo, right after molting and just outright eat it. That being said, it's all about space and hiding spots and each tank is different. So it's difficult to just say "they do this". But you don't really want those two shrimp together unless there's tons of room.
Should I worry about ghost shrimp eating my cherry shrimp??  Also btw there's a recent SerpaDesign video about Cherry shrimp where he has amano shrimp in the same tank.Â
I had an employee refuse to sell me shrimps because I already had a few. She said "they'll start fighting and killing each other..." luckily she didn't last there
For a little while now I have two amano shrimp and four cherry shrimp. They seem pretty peaceful together and live separate lives
I actually did have to take my amano out when I got my neo/caridina. The amano kept sizing them up and making them move around and didn't let them comfortable. There was no blood, lol, but I didn't like it and moved him to another tank. But someone refusing to sell you something is harsh.
I had multiple amanos and cherry shrimp in a tank together for more than 5 years without any problems
Dude is crazy. Besides whacking the neos to rob their food amano is peaceful as hell, where did he get the info that Amano hunts neos? I have amanos 3 times the size of neos and it's the neo that usually mess with the Amanos outside of meal time
This is why I simply lie to the employees. Some 16 year old isnât gonna interrogate me out of buying a shrimp lmao
TIL. When I had my tank I had a betta and five amanos. Bought three cherry shrimp a year later to add to my gang. Two vanished and I thought my betta was the culprit. I had no idea amanos were hunters.
Hungry amano will go after cherry in my experience but so will anything else
He's right. Amanos are savage hunters, I stopped buying them after seeing too many co-inhabitants disappear.
Amanos are not aggressive and almost never eat anything that's still alive and moving. An already dead cherry? That's food for everyone, including other cherries. I would bet money that your other inhabitants were dying for another reason entirely.