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Amano vs Ghost shrimps



> As I recall, Tom Barr was going to do an experiment consisting of ghost
> shrimp versus Amano shrimp versus snails against algae?  I would be
> interested in an update.  Who is winning?
> 
> Daphne

General notions from a couple of tanks:

Well dollar for dollar? The Ghost shrimp. Critter for critter? The Amano's
clearly. @ 0.25 $ each adding 25 to a 20 gallon put me out 6.25$(.20 ea if
sold in lots of 50). Amano's? 25 would cost roughly 15$(if you buy 50).

Amano's are not always available and not everyone is going to get a good
deal on them(some places sell them for 2.99ea etc then it becomes 25 x 2.99=
70+$). Ghost shrimp are everywhere. Very common and always cheap.

Amano's would do a better job. I'm still on the fence about the issue.
Ghostshrimp do seem to eat hydra. At least there none left in the tank that
was chronically infested. My own tanks at home had some hair algae induced
awhile back that had been hanging on after I tossed NH4+ in there(after
removing all the Amano shrimps to other quarters). So the tank had only a
few snails as the algae herbivore crew. Then it became a deposit for extra
trimmings (Riccia, etc) so things had gotten bad and algae was on the march
even with some manual removal.

Adding a bunch of herbivores like these critters does seem to really help
but I also wonder if it's so much from the eating(they do eat the hairalgae
but the waste they excrete in the form of NH4 that keeps things looking
nice. Nice low levels of NH4 with moderate levels of NO3 seem like a great N
combo for the plants.

Two things to consider here:
1)You can look at simply the presence of algae.
2)You can simply look at the plant's growth response.
Both where changed by the addition a noticeable amount IMO.
Two processes are going on here so you need to think about both rather than
just one process when you consider adding the shrimps.
In a heavy fish load tank, you might not get the same result I would think.

I'm not positive or anything on any of this. Just chair side postulations at
this point. I'm a long ways away from any real test.
Regards, 
Tom Barr