Strange Shrimp

[timebomb]

Hi, folks,

Several weeks ago, I got myself some Crystal Red Shrimps. Not the top grades but some cheap ones as I can't afford to pay more than $12 for a shrimp. Well, actually, to say I can't afford it isn't quite true. I'm not rich but I have enough money to pay for top grade shrimps. It's more because I think it is downright sinful to pay so much money for a tiny crustacean.

Anyway, the Crystal Reds have been in my cube tank for some time now. I tried to remove all other shrimps from the tank before I put them in but somehow or other, I must have missed a shrimp or 2 because there are now plenty of Black-Shelled shrimps in my tank too together with the Crystal Reds. I didn't think much of it until recently when I noticed I have some very small shrimps in the tank which are red in colour. They don't look like Crystal Reds but they aren't Black-Shelled shrimps either. Could they possibly be hybrids?

Here's a picture of my low-grade Crystal Red:


Here's a picture of a normal Black-Shelled shrimp:


Here are 2 pictures of the strange shrimp I'm seeing in my tanks. They look like Cherry Shrimps but are they?



Loh K L

[Green Baron]

They do look like Cherry shrimp. Do you have Cherry shrimp in your tank ?

[timebomb]

I used to have Cherry Shrimps in the tank, Gan but they were all removed before I put in the Crystal Reds. I'm hundred per cent sure, all Cherries were removed before any Crystal Reds were put in.

Loh K L

[Robert]

Hi Loh,
cherry shrimps are sometimes like a pest. It is very hard to get rid of them. In my CR tank it took me months to do so. The shrimplet looks a lot like a young cherry shrimp. It should be about 4-8 weeks old, judging by the size on the 3rd picture. A cross-breed of a CR and another shrimp species would not be red in the F1 because the red of the CR shrimps is a recessive gene.

Best regards

Robert

[timebomb]

Thanks for the information, Robert. So they are probably Cherry Shrimps. I'm sure I caught every one of them out from the tank but they must have laid eggs or something.

Loh K L

[RonWill]

...but they must have laid eggs or something

Kwek Leong, from what I understand and observed, Cherry shrimps do not lay eggs but 'fan off' live baby shrimplets from their carapace. They're tiny and real easy to miss those hiding amongst plants and near the substrate.

Good luck with the CRS and I hope to see a tankful of them

[hwchoy]

wait a minute, does any shrimp lay eggs at all? I thought they all hatch their eggs on their swimmerets, just that some hatch into larval stage while others (such as cherries) byposs the larval stage.

[simcb]

hi,

probably your black shell shrimp must have been cross with cherries before therefore it possible that sometime you get cherries instead of black shell offsprings.

Black shell are often known to cross with cherries. Thats why people who keep cherries kept them away from black shell so they produce 100% cherries. Its like diamond and CRS.

[Robert]

Hi Sim,
I didn't know this fact about black shell crossing with cherries before. But it would explain Loh's situation. I had the supposition for some time that these so called "black shell shrimps" are just a normal colored Neocaridina denticulata denticluta, maybe another subspecies but this Neocaridina species. If it is really the case, then Loh's single cherry shrimp is a F2 of a black shell x cherry shrimp cross. The red coloration of the cherry shrimps is a recessive mutation, so it appears only in a small percentage in the F2 again. BTW, shrimps do not follow straight Mendel's Laws, in my experience the offspring with a recessive coloration of a cross of a normal colored x mutated recessive color morph is very often much smaller than 25%. It saw this in several shrimp species before while breeding them.

best regards

Robert

[CM Media]

Sim is right.

I do have a tankful of black shell shrimps which I got from a hobbyist. He was keeping the shrimps with the cherries. I started the tank with 10 black shell shrimps and now I have cherries appearing from that tank! Some of them are even 100% red which display even better clolouration than my cherries!

I share the same thinking like Sim that the black shell shrimp itself already have being crossed and are carring the chreeies genes. It's just that we do not know when they're throwing out cherries. You need to go through a few generations to get the black shell shrimp to breed true again..