Blue Shrimps vs. Red Cherry Shrimps

dkohcm · Post by **dkohcm** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 6:17 am

Hi,

I bought one bag of 10 blue shrimps and one bag of 10 red cherry shrimps and put them into my one and half feet tank. My tank is full of various water plants. Temp is usually at 26 degrees. There are some small fish like Galaxy.

All the blue ones lives and most of the red ones dies. This is the 3rd time I introduced Red Cherry Shrimps into the tank and it failed. What could the reason, this is weird..

How could I measure PH value? Is this the only parameter to note other than temp? What other devices do I need?

Please help..
Cheers!

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 7:55 am

Fisrt of all, go to the shrimp varieties page and look up info on these shrimp. Next read the article on shrimp. Those are rules that are strictly enforced here.

They should not be kept together as they will interbreed and you'll end up with a tank full of mutts.

Galaxies will eat the larva, so find a new home for them. Nice fish, but they don't go with the shrimp.

Your dealer is likely the problem with the cherries if they die and the blues don't.

Any pet store will sell apH drop kit. Don't use strips.

Kenshin · Post by **Kenshin** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 7:55 am

Please read the articles before posting some of your basic inquiries.

Neonshrimp · Post by **Neonshrimp** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 9:52 am

Hello dkohcm,

Yes please follow the rules to avoid these reminders and warnings

Galaxies will eat the larva, so find a new home for them. Nice fish, but they don't go with the shrimp.

This is true as a group of Galaxies will spend an entire day eating all your baby shrimp rather than eat flack food, this has happened.

If you are in the US, pm me and I will refer you to a master test kit at a very low price

RCSGuy · Post by **RCSGuy** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 2:22 pm

If you have bought Cherries two other times and both times they all died, why introduce them a third time? Maybe you should do a bit more research follow the other's advice and stop killing poor shrimp.

zwergkrebszuechter · Post by **zwergkrebszuechter** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 3:20 pm

badflash wrote:
They should not be kept together as they will interbreed and you'll end up with a tank full of mutts.

Whats the big deal? It is one species after all....
Even selling red critters as red cherries of that brood is actually not fraud, as red is recessive and red ones will only have red offspring.

Maybe it is interesting to mention that I learned that shrimp do mate only shortly before laying eggs. You can find out, if you breed shrimp of different colors, so that you will see who are the parents, by the color of your young shrimp

Post by **Mustafa** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 6:22 pm

zwergkrebszuechter wrote:
badflash wrote:
They should not be kept together as they will interbreed and you'll end up with a tank full of mutts.

Whats the big deal? It is one species after all....
Even selling red critters as red cherries of that brood is actually not fraud, as red is recessive and red ones will only have red offspring.

That's not true and it's really reckless to do what you are suggesting. First of all it is not certain *at all* that all Neocaridina sp. sold as "blue shrimp" are actually N. denticulata sinensis (=N. heteropoda). Just because Werner ("wklotz" in this forum) identified some blue Neocaridina sp. as N. d. sinensis does not mean that all blue Neocaridina sp. shrimp in circulation must be so. This is especially the case if these shrimp are artificially colored or some environmental factor not present in captivity causes the blue coloration in several Neocaridina spp.

I know for sure that I have had a different species (different from N. d. sinensis) of blue Neocaridina sp. before. That was before I established my current "blue shrimp" population with some other blue shrimp from a different source (I have not crossed my current ones with red cherries). Anyway, those other blue shrimp I received were all females and I was almost sure that these blue shrimp were some type of Neocaridina sp. (at that time nobody had a clue that they were in fact Neocaridina and tons of weird speculation was going on in Germany and here which I had to clarify) I put a red cherry male in with them. After some time the females started carrying eggs, which confirmed that the blue guys were a Neocaridina species. When the young hatched there was a small percentage of red animals among them *in the first generation.* According to Mendel that should not happen with a recessive trait within a species. That can however happen in crosses between closely related but *different* species as the rules for intespecific crosses are usually not simple mendelian. That made it very clear to me that *that* batch of blue shrimp were definitely not the same species as the red cherry shrimp. Plus, I had previously crossed some wild-caught N. d. sinensis with my red cherries and none of the offspring in the first generation were red. As expected according to Mendelian rules.

One has to be careful though. Although having red animals in the first generation in such a cross means that the two crossed species are not the same, it does not follow that no red animals in the first generation means that the species are the same! So, one must be careful here.

The moral of the story is that there are mostly likely lots of interspecies hybrid red Neocaridina sp. in circulation that are *not* red cherries, i.e. not N. d. sinensis due to people lacking knowledge ("oh...all Neocaridina are the same so I put them together as they are the wild form") or people acting on hearsay ("oh...I heard blue shrimp are all the same species as red cherries") and mixing away all kinds of Neocaridina sp. "wild forms" (so they think) of red cherries in with their red cherries and selling or bartering the offspring.

As not everyone cannot be expected to be an "expert" (i.e. knowledgeable) in this field (shrimp, genetics, you name it), it is a good and important rule to not keep closely related species together as they *will* cross and you *will* have interspecies hybrids. Then you will have to figure out what to do with the offspring. Many people will knowingly or unknowingly give these animals away as "red cherries" or "wild form of red cherries" and they will spread in the hobby and polute pure populations. Before you know it there won't be any pure populations left. And all because some people decided to be reckless and then dishonest.

I would leave crossing experiments to the few experts who actually have a plan and know what they are doing and why. Plus, at this point our main focus should be to establish as many *pure* species as possible in captivity as we are not even certain if many of these species will be around in the wild a few years from now.

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 7:54 pm

at this point our main focus should be to establish as many *pure* species as possible in captivity as we are not even certain if many of these species will be around in the wild a few years from now.

Amen to that!

Neonshrimp · Post by **Neonshrimp** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 10:06 pm

If you do have mixes/crosses please keep them seperated from the pure strains. Also, be sure to let anyone whom you give them to know the shrimp are crosses/mixes so they can do the same.

Thanks

.

dkohcm · Post by **dkohcm** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 12:36 am

I understand that the soil is an important factor too. I am currently using the purple colored soil instead of the normal one. Is that the reason that cause the red shrimps to die.

Neonshrimp · Post by **Neonshrimp** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 12:49 am

It depends, if the dye used to color the soil is toxic then you will have problems. You should be able to search for information about the soil if it is widely used and/or if the manufacturer can be tracked down. Again, I hope you are able to solve the problem.

dkohcm · Post by **dkohcm** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:06 pm

I have another smaller tank and fill up with the right brown gravel last night, put a bit of moss inside and moved some of the shrimps in. Will monitor for the next couple of days. Cheers!

Post by **Mustafa** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:49 am

dkohcm wrote:I have another smaller tank and fill up with the right brown gravel last night, put a bit of moss inside and moved some of the shrimps in. Will monitor for the next couple of days. Cheers!

Did you *just* set up the tank? If this is the case I would *really* urge you to go over all the articles here and search the froum. Those are the rules here that everyone has to follow, as badflash and kenshin have already pointed out to you. Consider this a last warning.

Your shrimp will most likely die...either all of them or a majority. You can't just set up a tank, put some moss in there and fill it with shrimp. Moss or not...the tank needs to cycle first. It's the safest way. And I additionally test my new tanks first with pond snails and/or ramshorn snails. If they are moving around and eating it's usually safe to move in the shrimp. In such a tank you can put your shrimp in and they will almost immediately start picking around and behaving normally...NOT just sit there, hide and/or do nothing.

Again...do some extensive research before buying any new shrimp or attempting anything else.