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I know that aquarium inhabitants go missing and reappear a week or two later all the time, but I think my wood shrimp set some kind of record. He disappeared a full 3 months ago, and showed back up today at feeding time. I had looked for him in the tank before but could never find him. I mean, seriously, how ridiculous is this? It's only a 38 gallon tank, so it's not like it's an 8 foot tank or something.

Anyway, I was quite happy.

Tis magic.......

3 months!?!... think that may be a record, Joe.
Those wood shrimp aren't exactly tiny, maybe found a hollow slab of DW to crawl into ???
I've been tinkering with the notion of getting a shrimp infestation in one of my tanks, but just not sure of their survivability (predation), so I broke down last Sunday and got a dozen ghost shrimp, intro'd to tank at one end while feeding fish at the other to distract the fish, all seems fine thus far, Monday night after dinner, my 4-yr old daughter wanted me to name all the shrimp, ....ok.... WALDO..., so every night since we- me, wife, kid, try to find Waldo... any of them...30-40 min a night...so far best count was this morning, 5
My suggestion, a nano radio tracking device of some sort ( must be water-proof)

I think he just hung out in this really dense patch of subulata that I have planted in one back corner of the tank. That's where my cories spend all day hiding.

My suggestion, a nano radio tracking device of some sort ( must be water-proof)

Sweet.

I've had a similar experience with my 3 amano shrimp. They were the previous inhabitants of my 10 gallon when I upgraded to a 60, but I lost track of them the 2nd day after moving them in. After a few weeks I feared the worst and thought them dead.

Fast forward about 4 months, and my sister and nephews were staying over.
One of them says "Uncle, you have bugs in your tank!"
So I ask him to show me where, thinking it was probably poo or a snail or something.
There, poking out of one of the crevices of the driftwood, was the antennae of an Amano shrimp! The only thing visable was its tiny feet plucking away at the algae growing along the edge of the crevice. As if sensing that it was discovered, it quickly retreated deep into the hole.

It has been the one and only time I've seen them since they got lost (it's been 7 months now). Granted I have a bunch of driftwood and plants in my tank, so there's no shortage of places to hide.

It's like the loch ness monster. I swear I saw it!

I have 2 wood shrimps since june, and only one month ago I was able to take pictures of one of them. hiding is just their normal behaviour, and they are really good in it. I can see them often waving under driftwood or better said I can see their fans, but this only if I look from a side in the tank.They almost never walk on the gravel.
In the beginning I also thought they were dead somewhere

The funny part was that for the first month I had him, he was out and about every night at feeding time. He even shooed one of my cories away from an algae tablet, then waited for it to dissolve and starting filtering it. He just disappeared one day after a water change -- I thought that maybe something in the water change killed him. Weird.

joe thats a pretty long time! the longest i ever heard of was amazing. this guy bought a spotted raphael catfish.
after he placed it in his tank it promptly went and hid. nothing new for a raphael. well a few months went by and the guy couldnt find it and assumed it had been eaten (it was still small and there was another larger catfish was in the tank) a little more than 2 years later he lifts up a decoration and it comes swimming out. during those two years he had done two complete water changes. the raphael must have wedged itself in somewhere and waited it out.

The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we dont know what to do.

Is he a little thinner than you remember?
I was thinking maybe he got wedged somewhere but was able to get enough food to stay alive, then once he slimmed a little he could slide out. /:'

Wow....The only close to yours thing ive experienced is the fact when a few of my fish went missing (Gourami, swordtail) I never found them, and i thought they jumped. I looked all over my room, and not a single clue as to where they went. I never found em, not even their bones...

PS: Not to take over or anything, but are those peculiar shrimp hard to keep? Do they need to be fed microfoods? Or to they need to be kept in groups? I want one so badly, for a 5g nano, or a 30g long community tank.

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Nah, they're not hard at all, although I wouldn't recommend one for your nano. It would be hard to keep him fed as there's not a lot of organic matter floating around, and if you tried to feed him manually you could easily overfeed and pollute the whole tank. A 30 would be perfect. There's usually enough stuff in the water to keep him sustained, plus you can always throw a little algae tablet his way once in a while. It'll get all nice and soft and he can gorge himself, plus the other inhabitants can finish up the leftovers.

They are a bit sensitive to temp changes. In fact, that's what I though did in my shrimp. Other than that, they're pretty simple. Not too picky about chemistry. Just keep up on your water changes.