Amano Shrimp

🌍 Overview

The Amano shrimp is the largest of the dwarf shrimp commonly kept in freshwater aquariums and arguably the single best algae eater in the hobby, tackling hair, thread, and even tough beard algae that most fish and other shrimp ignore. It gets its name from Takashi Amano, the Japanese aquascaper who began using it to keep his pioneering planted tanks algae-free in the early 1980s. Unlike the cherry shrimp it's often sold alongside, the Amano shrimp cannot complete its life cycle in freshwater: its larvae hatch needing brackish to full-strength salt water to develop, so almost every Amano shrimp in the trade is wild-caught rather than captive-bred.

📋 Quick Facts

📜 History

William Stimpson described the shrimp in 1860, but his specimens and most of the North Pacific Exploring Expedition collection he had brought to Chicago burned in the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871, and he died nine months later. With the types gone, the same animal was described again as Caridina japonica by De Man in 1892, and that name held for over a century. In 2006 a team led by Yixiong Cai collected fresh material at Stimpson's original localities, showed the two names covered one species, and restored the older multidentata. Takashi Amano, who founded his aquarium company in 1982 and whose Nature Aquarium World books began appearing in 1994, died in 2015.

🧠 Test Yourself

🤩 Fun Facts