rm
Passport
- Family
- Shrimp and Yabbies
- Grows to
- 3 cm (1.2")
- Lives
- 1–2 years
- Temperament
- Peaceful
- Care
- Beginner
- SwimsSuggested
- Everywhere
- Keep
- In a group of 6 or more
- Water
- 22–28 °C (72–82 °F)
Taiwan
Care requirements
i
On record for Cherry Shrimp: adult size, lifespan, minimum tank, temperature, ph, hardness, carbonate hardness, minimum group, diet, care level, swim level.
Not on record for Cherry Shrimp: tank length.
A figure that is not on record is left out rather than guessed. One marked Suggested comes from keeping knowledge rather than a page.
- Minimum tank 19 L / 5.0 US gal
- pH 6–8
- Hardness 4–14 dGH
- Carbonate hardness 1–8 dKH
- Diet algae eater/omnivore
Care notes written from general aquarium knowledge, not from the cited sources.
About
If you're going to keep an invertebrate, start here. Neocaridina put up with a wider range of conditions than any other ornamental shrimp, they breed without you doing anything, and they stay small enough to fit in almost any tank.
Their colour comes from selective breeding, and it isn't stable. Cherry, blue dream, red rili and the rest are all one species, and mixing them gives you offspring that drift back toward wild brown within a few generations. If the colour matters to you, keep one form per tank.
They graze constantly, and that's really the pleasure of them. A shrimp that sits still for long is usually a shrimp that isn't well.
Tank setup
Give them surface to graze on and don't worry much about volume. Moss, botanicals, dense planting and hardscape all carry the biofilm they actually live on, and a bare tank will starve them no matter how much you feed.
Only put them in a mature tank. Biofilm takes weeks to build up, and shrimp going into a new tank have nothing to graze even when the water tests perfectly clean. This is the single most common way a first colony gets lost.
They climb everything — glass, plants, hardscape — so don't think of them as a bottom-dwelling animal the way a snail is. Give them height to work with.
Cover the filter intake. Shrimplets are small enough to get drawn in, and they will be.
Feeding
In an established tank they'll find most of their own food. Supplement two or three times a week rather than daily: blanched vegetables, a proper shrimp pellet, and the odd bit of protein.
Take out whatever they don't eat. Overfeeding fouls a shrimp tank fast, and it's usually why a colony stops breeding.
Avoid: copper, in anything. It turns up in plenty of fish medications and in some plant fertilisers, and it kills invertebrates at concentrations fish don't even notice. Check every treatment before it goes anywhere near the tank — this is the one mistake that empties a colony overnight.
Filtration and flow
Use a sponge filter, or guard the intake, and keep the flow gentle.
Stability will matter more to them than any particular reading. Shrimp handle a range of parameters but respond badly to sudden change, and the classic disaster is losing a whole colony after a big water change with water at a different temperature or hardness.
Hardness isn't optional for shrimp. They need minerals in the water to build a new shell, and very soft water gives you failed moults no matter how clean the tank is.
With plants
Completely safe, and one of the few animals that actually improves a planted tank rather than just tolerating it. They pick detritus out of moss and carpet plants without damaging a thing.
Add moss specifically for them. It holds biofilm, and it gives shrimplets somewhere to survive.
Health
Failed moults are the usual killer, and they point at your water rather than the animal — you'll find a shrimp stuck half out of its old shell, or dead with a split carapace. Fix the hardness rather than treating the shrimp.
A distinct white ring around the body, different from the normal moult line, tells you a moult is going to fail.
Bacterial and fungal infections show up as opaque white patches in the flesh. There's little you can do beyond removing the affected animal and improving conditions.
Breeding
This happens by itself, and the hard part is stopping it. A berried female carries eggs under her tail for around three weeks, fanning them constantly, and the young come out as miniature adults with no larval stage — which is exactly why this species is easy where most shrimp aren't.
Give them cover and no fish and the colony will multiply until the food runs short. Most fish eat shrimplets, so a mixed tank tends to hold a stable small population rather than a growing one.
Tank mates
Avoid14
- Convict Cichlid Convict Cichlid reaches 15 cm and will eat adult Cherry Shrimp.
- Jewel Cichlid Jewel Cichlid reaches 15 cm and will eat adult Cherry Shrimp.
- Kribensis Kribensis reaches 8 cm and will eat adult Cherry Shrimp.
- Oscar Oscar reaches 35 cm and will eat adult Cherry Shrimp.
- Panda Garra Panda Garra reaches 9 cm and will eat adult Cherry Shrimp.
Only with care33
- Chinese Algae Eater Chinese Algae Eater is aggressive and Cherry Shrimp is peaceful.
- Least Killifish Least Killifish is small enough to leave adult Cherry Shrimp alone, but will still take shrimplets.
- Scarlet Badis Scarlet Badis is small enough to leave adult Cherry Shrimp alone, but will still take shrimplets.
- Agassiz's Dwarf Cichlid Agassiz's Dwarf Cichlid is a risk to Cherry Shrimp: shrimp and yabbies and sth american cichlids - dwarf are a pairing to watch.
- Angelfish Angelfish is a risk to Cherry Shrimp: angelfish and shrimp and yabbies are a pairing to watch.
No conflict is recorded with the other 61 species in the database, so nothing to flag.