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Is there a difference between amano shrimp and ghost shrimp?

Also, if something in my tank killed my snails, can I get get ghost shrimp instead or would they potentially die as well? I think it might be the medicine that I used to kill the ich I had a month or so ago. Will they be ok?

Amano shrimp (Caridina japonica) are Atyids native to marshes and cool mountain brooks of Northeast Asia (Japan, Korea, etc.), whereas North American ghost shrimp (various Palaemonetes spp.) are indigenous Palaemonids to be found in great densities amongst the vegetation of Southern U.S. lakes and slow-flowing streams. The former is characterized by typical low-level larval development (release of planktonic larvae which require water of at least brackish salinity to develop, in nature washing down to estuaries or the open ocean), whereas the latter releases somewhat larger larvae able to develop in plain freshwater. See http://www.petshrimp.com/amanoshrimp.html]http://www.petshrimp.com/amanoshrimp.html[/link] and [link=http://www.petshrimp.com/glassshrimp.html.

Residual ich meds absorbed by substrate and decor will, for the forseeable future, likely kill any shrimp you place within your tank.

Last edited by Veneer at 19-Oct-2005 20:46

Veneer,

What a beautiful explanation, thank you for that.

I would like to add what I heard about them. Amano shrimp are supposedly living at least twice as long as Ghost shrimp and they do possess smaller claws than Ghost shrimp. There is once in a while the debate if shrimp eat fish fry (as in actively hunting the fry, not sick or dead ones) and the chances of this to happen with Amano are smaller. On the other hand, Amano shrimp are not as good of a grazer on tougher algae as they cannot nip the thread off, they have to literally chew it from the end on down.

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Thanks guys! I wish I had though to ask you guys that before I got them but I did not think of it until afterwards. Right now they seem to be doing fine in the tank so hopefully all the residual medicine is gone. I took all the plants and decorations out of the tank and rinsed them off really well. I hope tat helped. I am sure there is probably a little left in the gravel but I am going to hope for the best in this case. They are jsut so much fun to watch they are quite active.
Thanks for the information. I had originally asked because I was thinkign abotu putting maybe 2 types of shrimp in my 10 gallon tank if that was possible but honestly I wasn't sure that there was even more than one type of freshwater shrimp liek the ghost shrimp so that helped a lot.


Christina