Breeding Amano Shrimp

I bought a couple Amano shrimp for my 1 week old 15 gallon tank (seeded with
a filter from another tank). Until the shrimp there was nothing but plants
& algae. It's always fun trying to find them hiding in the plants, on the
side of the filter, etc. Two days later I worried when I found an empty
skeleton and couldn't find one of the shrimps. I was relieved to find them
later on. So this got me into doing all kinds of research about them to
learn more about them. I've read all the Amano shrimp pages and posts I
could find and it seems there are several different options about them. I
still have a couple questions and I'm hoping to get some more input.

1) Do I really need to add iodine or table salt to the water? We have
pretty hard water here, really hard actually. But I don't know if hard
means it contains calcium or iodine. I prefer not to add anything unless I
really need to.

2) Many pages say they're easy to bread, others say you need to add aquarium
salt to the tank. I prefer not to add salt because eventually I'd like to
add some fish, plus once you start adding salt it seems a little hard to
keep up on exactly how much salt is in the tank.

3) How can I tell if I have males or females? I haven't been able to find
any pictures comparing a male & female. I know the females have their spots
in lines, and both mine seem to have their spots in lines although not
perfectly lined up (a little off). I also know females are bigger but mine
appear to be the same size. I guess they're both females. If this is true,
I'll need to go back to the LSF to buy another 1 or 2 hoping to get a mail.
They're $6/each here (Paris) so I'm hoping to get them to bread for me and
my neighbord.

So far I plan to add some neon tetras and botias (clown or yoyo) later on.
But if I can manage to get these shrimp to bread I might just keep my tank
Amano only for a while.

Thanks
Michael