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After doing some research I think my LFS goofed a few months ago and sold me two amano shrimp as feeder ghost shrimp for 50 cents each! Not bad if I don't say so myself.

I bought them for a small heavily planted 5 gallon that had a couple guppies in it. I was having a nasty hair algae problem and I figured I'd give "ghost shrimp" a try since they were cheap at this LFS and no one in the area carried Amanos. Within a few days all of the hair algae was gone! Not bad for "ghosts" I thought.

So recently I bought 10 more ghost shrimp from this same LFS to help combat a hair algae problem in a lightly planted 10 gallon. It's got a huge lump of java moss that was mixed with lots of algae.

These new shrimp are totally clear with no markings and have a slight "hump" in their backs. Plus, they weren't doing much for the algae either. So two weeks ago I broke that 5 gallon planted tank down to put the plants in my new 75G and I put the two "Ghost" shrimp in the 10 gallon with all the new shrimp for safe keeping until the 75g is ready. This is when I noticed the difference... the two old shrimp were larger and looked nothing like the new shrimp. The old "ghosties" were straight shaped and had a VERY distinct line down their backs. On top of that, within days of adding those two all of the hair algae in that tank is gone!

The two shrimp I bought many months ago are absolutely identical to the shrimp in this picture:
http://www.thekrib.com/Fish/Shrimp/caridina_japonica_03.jpg

Whereas the ghosties I got a couple weeks ago look exactly like this picture:
http://www.thekrib.com/Fish/Shrimp/palaemon_paucidens.gif

Do ghost shrimp develop that tan line down their backs over time or did I really get two amano shrimp for 50 cents each? I know this LFS has told me they can order Amanos and they charge $6 each so I think I made out like a bandit and didn't even know it!


Last edited by Rewd at 16-Nov-2004 01:04

I'm not sure if its amano shrimp but that first picture definately isn't a ghost

According to the URL its a caridina japonica which is an amano shrimp.