Yamato shrimps and Siamese Algae Eaters are two very famous algae eaters in planted aquariums.

JUNE 1997

When I first got my first lot of Yamato shimps from a local aquarium supply, I really loved them, but because of poor transportation all the Yamatos died one after another in 3 days' time. I had to wait for at lease a month for the next shipment.

During the long waiting time, I asked myself: can these shrimps breed in planted aquariums? I started to collect info. (from friends, internet, suppliers...etc) and the answer is NO. The reason is that the shrimps are from the river mouth and only breed there. But since they are from there, I thought maybe I could give it a try.

JULY 1997

I ordered around 50 to 70 Yamato from the local aquarium supply this time. Before the shrimps arrived I tried to keep my planted tank in top condition. Full of plants in my tank, oxygen at 150 %, ph at 6.6, KH at 3, Temp at 27-29 C. Besides plants, I have about 200 pieces of tetra in the tank.

When I got my yamatos, I first let cooled the temperature down to room temperature and released them into a basket first, then slowly introduced some water from the planted tank to the basket until there are almost the same temperature. After that, I transferred them to the planted tank. I lost only two shrimps,so there was a good start.

Within two days, all hair algae in the tank were gone. It was real good, but after another few days I found out that all my Java Moss were all being eaten by the yamatos, and I started noticing that they do eat other things too, like dry food that I feed my tetra, blood worms... looks like they were all really happy in the new enviroment.

AUGUST 1997 (AFTER ABOUT 6 WEEKS)

I saw 4 of the big Yamatos (3cm) carrying some sort of eggs at the bottom of the bodies of the shrimps. I waited for another few days and then moved two of them out to another small tank with some plants.

After two days, I noticed some "eggs" under the shrimp's body were able to move about, so I guessed that they were the baby yamatos. For the other two "mothers" in the planted tank, I couldn't really observe them because most of the time, they are hiding in corner where there are a lot of plants.

Another 3 days, I could see the baby yamotos swim around the plants in the small tank, but for those in the planted tank, I couldn't see any of the baby yamatos around. I guessed they must have been eaten by the fishes in the tank.

The baby yamatos in the small tank all died within 1-3 days. I don't know the reason, could be the water or some other reason, I really don't know.

SEPTEMBER 1997 (AFTER 3 WEEKS)

When I did a cleaning up of my big plant tank, I found a lot of small shimps (2-3mm) attached to the draft wood that I used to tied my ricca. There were so many - about 30 over of them - on that draftwood (10cm by 6cm). Some of them died because of my carelessness. I let them drop out from that draftwood to the floor and they were difficult to remove them from the floor. I did get them into the water, but they all died. This time I put all the remaining small baby yamatos back into the planted tank. And from then on, I tried to look for baby Yamatos in my planted tank daily, but I could hardly see them.

NOVEMBER 1997

I could then see some small Yamatos (1-1.5cm). I noticed that their growth rate was very slow. Looks like they do not grow up easily in fresh water.

JANUARY 1998

I've only seen the one belonging to my first born yamato. It's is about 2cm.

JUNE 1998

I found out that 90% of my mosses were gone. I guessed my tank had too many of Yamatos, so I decided to introduce some small Cichlids to eat some of the Yamatos.

SEPTEMBER 1998

I cleared my tank again. I moved some of the small Yamatos out from the main tank to a small container with lots of mosses in there. Hope that they can make it this time.