rm
Passport
- Family
- Shrimp and Yabbies
- Grows to
- 3 cm (1.2")
- Temperament
- Peaceful
- CareSuggested
- Beginner
- SwimsSuggested
- Everywhere
- Keep
- In a group of 6 or more
- Water
- 22–28 °C (72–82 °F)
Taiwan
Care requirements
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On record for Red Rili Shrimp: adult size, minimum tank, temperature, ph, hardness, carbonate hardness, minimum group, diet, care level, swim level.
Not on record for Red Rili Shrimp: lifespan, 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
Red rilis are a cherry shrimp with a window in the middle. The head and the tail carry solid red, and the section between them is clear enough to see straight through — a pattern that came out of Japanese breeding work on high-grade cherries and has been maintained ever since.
The pattern is the whole appeal and it's also the whole difficulty. Rili is a pattern rather than a colour, so it appears in blue, black, orange and other lines too, and in every one of them it is unstable.
Everything else about them is a Neocaridina, which means they're as easy to keep as a cherry shrimp. The demanding part is purely cosmetic.
Tank setup
Give your rilis a mature tank with grazing surface everywhere — moss, wood, botanicals, dense planting — and ordinary, stable water. They tolerate a broad range and only really insist on enough hardness to build shells.
Use a dark substrate to lift the red. The clear midsection reads best against something dark behind it, and a pale tank flattens the whole effect.
Keep them separate from other Neocaridina. Cherries, blue dreams and yellows will all cross with them, and crossing destroys the pattern faster than it destroys colour.
Cover the intake. Shrimplets are drawn into anything unguarded.
Feeding
Rilis graze biofilm all day and mostly feed themselves once a tank has matured.
Supplement a few times a week with a quality shrimp food, blanched vegetables and the occasional protein. Remove leftovers — a fouled shrimp tank stops breeding before it starts killing.
Foods with carotenoids do help the red saturate, which matters more here than in a solid-coloured shrimp because the contrast between the coloured and clear sections is the point.
Avoid: copper in anything. It arrives in fish medicines and plant fertilisers and kills invertebrates at doses fish ignore.
Filtration and flow
A sponge filter, gentle flow, and no unguarded intakes. That's the whole requirement.
Keep water changes small and matched for temperature and hardness. Sudden change is the one thing a Neocaridina genuinely can't absorb, and it shows up as a wave of failed moults a few days later.
Otherwise they're as undemanding as any shrimp in the hobby.
With plants
Red rilis are entirely safe with plants and clean detritus out of them without doing harm.
Plant heavily and darkly. Dense green growth suits the pattern and gives shrimplets the cover they need to reach adulthood.
Moss earns its place for the biofilm as much as for the shelter.
Health
Failed moults are the main killer and the cause is nearly always insufficient minerals in the water. Hardness is not optional for any shrimp.
Look for a white line around the body that differs from the usual moult break — that one predicts a moult that won't complete.
They're otherwise robust, and a colony that has settled will usually look after itself for years.
Breeding
They breed constantly and without help. The young emerge as miniature adults, which is why Neocaridina are the shrimp people succeed with.
Holding the pattern is the real work. A rili colony left alone throws a steady proportion of young that are fully coloured, fully clear, or patchily somewhere in between, and without culling the clean rili pattern disappears within a few generations.
Select deliberately and be patient. Rili is genetically messy, and even a well-managed colony produces a mixture — the good ones are what you keep back, and the rest make perfectly good shrimp for a tank where the pattern doesn't matter.
Tank mates
Avoid14
- Convict Cichlid Convict Cichlid reaches 15 cm and will eat adult Red Rili Shrimp.
- Jewel Cichlid Jewel Cichlid reaches 15 cm and will eat adult Red Rili Shrimp.
- Kribensis Kribensis reaches 8 cm and will eat adult Red Rili Shrimp.
- Oscar Oscar reaches 35 cm and will eat adult Red Rili Shrimp.
- Panda Garra Panda Garra reaches 9 cm and will eat adult Red Rili Shrimp.
Only with care33
- Chinese Algae Eater Chinese Algae Eater is aggressive and Red Rili Shrimp is peaceful.
- Least Killifish Least Killifish is small enough to leave adult Red Rili Shrimp alone, but will still take shrimplets.
- Scarlet Badis Scarlet Badis is small enough to leave adult Red Rili Shrimp alone, but will still take shrimplets.
- Agassiz's Dwarf Cichlid Agassiz's Dwarf Cichlid is a risk to Red Rili Shrimp: shrimp and yabbies and sth american cichlids - dwarf are a pairing to watch.
- Angelfish Angelfish is a risk to Red Rili 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.