First mature female cherry behaviour

[louis_last]

I have four cherry shrimps in my tank along with three amanos, they are the only fauna in there and have been absolutely thriving, growing rapidly and just generally providing hours of entertainment *My amanos to come to me and eat from my fingers at the surface, I swear they remind me of dogs*
anyway, the cherry shrimps were very small when I got them and just the other day the female shed her skin and finally became fully adult but I couldn't see her for a whole day then when I finally spotted her hiding she was berried with a large clutch of eggs, the next day she had dropped her eggs and disappeared again, I have seen her once since but now haven't seen her for two days. Is it possible that because she is the only female amongst three males she is being harassed? she used to be very bold before she became properly adult. Do I need to make it a priority to get some more females?

[infopimp]

Young cherries will drop eggs early on, in my limited experience. I think sometimes they are too young to breed.

But it could be any number of things, so at the expense of making you do work, could you post your water parameters? In particular:

-pH
-temperature
-hardness
-ammonia
-nitrate

Or any of the above... thanks!

[noobsheep]

hi, do you need to provide hiding space for any shrimps in order to allow breeding ?
thanks in advance!

[TitoC]

The harassment should be nothing the female can't handle, if there is enough hiding space.

Indeed it is important to provide enough hiding places in the form of moss and other plants. I always make sure there are plants on the surface of the tank for recently molted (females especially) to hang out untill they are hard. (You can really see they look for cover while the males swim around looking for them).
Also, many shrimp hang on to vertical plants to shed the skin. They can manage without, but they clearly prefer it in my tanks.

Probably in this case it was indeed the first trial. Maybe that the fertilization did not take place... Let's see next time.

PS. Amanos are indeed fantastic! (they even live as long as dogs! I've had some for 6 years)