Yamato Shrimp Breeding

An article extracted from Shrimp Now forum on how to breed yamatos.

In nature Amano’s live in coastal area in freshwater lakes. The lakes where they live have a connection with the sea trough a river. When the eggs are ready to hatch, the pregnant shrimp swims to the beginning of the river and that’s the place where the eggs will hatch..
The larva of the Amano shrimp flow with the river to the mouth of the river, where the water is brackish/ salt, because of the connection with the sea.
The larva will grow-up in the sea or the mouth of the river. The larva has a couple of different stages when growing. After about 25 days or so the larva turns in to shrimplets.
The little shrimplets have to get strength by eating algae for another 20 days. Then they are strong enough to swim into the river and return to the freshwater lake to become an adult shrimp.

How do you start...

You start with the right material....

• A 54 liter tank (about 14 gallon). Not smaller. This because the female get over 1000 larva and with a smaller tank the water doesn’t stay in balance. (No filtering!)
• A 20/30 liter tank. Freshwater. Just a normal tank to place the Amano shrimplets in when the can go from salt to sweet water. Add some plants, etc... This tank must have filtering.
• The tank need lamps...
• A hiding place for the pregnant female. For instance a piece of a broken flowerpot
• A plastic decoration plant. Real plants could have some effect on the balance of the water.
• Air pump
• 8 mm air hose, 2 pieces about 1 meter.
• Piece of lead to wrap around the hose.
• Artemia sif
• pipet
• granule food small sized
• Liquizell (a liquid starter feed) it’s made by Hobby.
• Spirulina (powder or tablets)( 100% natural).
• Sea salt, for instance from Tropical Marine. Other brands can be used, but this is the brand witch is used by the inventor of this breeding method. You need about 3 kg.
• A pregnant female...


Preparing the tank for the female

put the empty tank at a place where it’s as dark as possible.. No direct sunlight!!
Get some water of the tank where your Amano’s living in, and fill the breeding tank for 50%. Fill in the rest of the tank with clean water.
Put the plastic plant and the hiding place at the bottom of the tank. Make sure it stays there.
The lamps must be burning from 11:00 till 23:00
The water has to be about 22 degrees Celsius

Wrap the little piece of lead around the end of the hose so that the end of the hose stays at the bottom of the tank. Connect the hose to the air pump and put the hose on the bottom of the tank, in the middle. The airflow must not be too soft. Look when adjusting the speed. You have to see the bubbles about ½ second apart from each other.

There is no filtering of the water, because the larva could get sucked in to the filter.

This tank has to run like this for about 3 weeks.. Do not remove the algae when growing.. That’s food for the female and for the larva.


AFTER 3 WEEKS WAITING...

The tank is ready now for a pregnant female. Find a female that is pregnant for a couple of days, not longer then a week. You can see that because the eggs are dark brown/olive green. When the eggs are light green/ gray the female is pregnant for over a week. The risk of hatching to early is very big then... So be patience and wait until you see a female with ‘fresh’ eggs.

The pregnant female goes in the prepared tank. You have to wait now for 4 or 5 weeks till hatching..
You can feed the female every 3 or 4 days with 2 or 3 grains of granule food. When the granule is molding, feed less.

When you are waiting for the eggs to hatch, start to set up the tank for the shrimplets. When the shrimplets are full grown and ready to go to freshwater again the tank is ready to use! Nicely run in for a couple of weeks...


EGGS JUST HATCHED...

DAY 1.
When the eggs hatched the water of the tank will be full with little white larva. They look like little commas and there are about 1000 of them... It looks like soda with bubbles.
Remove the female, plant and hiding place...You can do this with big tweezers for instance or just by hand.. The larva are strong so don’t worry.
The larva can survive in freshwater for about 4 days.. So the water must become salt now.. The method seems a bit drastic, but it works very good.. It doesn’t do any harm to the larva.

The rate of salt and water is... 25 grams seasalt at 1 liter water. So if there is 54 liters water in the tank, you have to put in 1350 grams sea salt.

Take the salt and gently put it into the tank where the larva are in and stir a little with a (plastic) spoon till the salt is dissolved. The water could become a little white, but that disappears after some days.
Then feed 15 drips of Liquizell.

When the lamps are on the larva swim to the top of the water, because they are phototactic. When the lamps go out the larva will go to the corner of the tank towards the (day)light.

DAY 2.
When everything is all right, the larva swim to the top (the light) when the lamps of the tank goes on, and after a while they drift a bit in the middle of the tank, or just above.
When most of the larva is swimming curved with head down, it’s going all right. When they lay on their sides on the bottom or drifting that way at the top, it’s not good.
The water must be less white then yesterday and you don’t have to feed.

DAY 3.
The water just should be clear now.
When the light goes on, feed 10 drips of Liquizell.

Day 4.
A rest day. When you look at the larva you maybe can see that they grow a little..

Day 5.
Today you have to feed Spirulina. Take the powder ( when isn’t powder yet, crush it) and mix it with water till you have a dark green juice. Adjust 30 drips of the juice in the water with a pipet.

Day 6.
Rest day. Some of the larva can feed on the algae on the windows..

Day 7.
A week has past... you should see some growth now. If the larva did not grow at all the change of them becoming shrimp is very small. They will die in the next week or so.

Day 8.
Feed 20 drips of Liquizell

Day 9.
Rest day

Day 10.
Feed 15 drips of Liquizell

Day 11.
Rest day. When you look very close you see some change of the larva. Some of the larva has a sort of a little trunk at the end of their tails.. That’s discharge. It’s a sign that the larva is feeding very good, and that their digestion is all right.

Dag 12.
Rest day. The water is turning a bit green. The larva is swimming powerfully in curved position.

Day 13.
Feed 30 drips of Spirulina juice

Day 14.
Rest day. You should see that the larva turns brown/reddish...

Day 15.
Water change.. 1/3 of the water must be changed today.
Take two 10 liter buckets, 8 mm hose and the Artemia sif.
The best time is to change the water when the lights are off, because the larva are at the bottom of the tank then.
Put the sif in a corner of the tank so that you can suck out the water through the sif. Do not use a hose with bigger diameters, because the stream is to strong for the larva and you’ll harm them.
Suck out the water with the hose, through the sif. So no larva can get in to the hose.
It takes some time, but it’s for the better...

Don’t forget to add the salt to the clean water. 25 grams a liter. 250 grams a bucket.
Put the salt in the bucket, dissolve it and then put it in the tank.
Add 20 drips Liquizell to the tank.

Day 16.
Rest day

Day 17.
Rest day. The larva will stay in the lower parts of the water..

Day 18.
Feed 30 drips of Spirulina juice. However, when the water is very green, don’t feed.

Day 19.
Rest day

Day 20.
Rest day. When you look at the larva, some of them flash through the water for a second.

Day 21.
When the water is clear you can feed 20 drips of Liquizell.

Day 22 + 23.
Rest day

Day 24.
When the water is clear feed 15 drips of Spirulina juice.

Day 25.
Rest day.
When you look close you should see the first shrimplets!!! Mostly the sit in the corners of the tank, or at the bottom, feeding on the algae.

Day 26.
If the water is clear feed 15 drips Liquizell. This is the last feed...

Day 27.
Rest day.

Day 28.
Water change. You must do it just like day 15.

Day 29 – 32
Rest day

Day 33.
At this point there should not be any larva anymore.. The entire batch of larva become shrimplets.

Day 34 – 43.
Rest day

Day 44.
Big Day!! The shrimplets can go to the freshwater tank now!!
You can catch them and directly put them in freshwater. When you want to be careful you can do the next thing.
Take 50% of the saltwater out of the tank and replace it with freshwater from the freshwater tank where you’re going to take them. After an hour you can catch them and place them in freshwater...

The shrimplets can be fed with granule or special shrimp food..

If the shrimps stay alive until they are adult Amanos, your breeding was successful!!


This breeding method is translated with permission by the editor of a German site. The site is www.caridinajaponica.de. The method they use for breeding Amano’s is developed by Logemann.

Feel free to experiment with this method and share your success story.