The many colours and markings of opae ula

[Mech]

I just wanted to ask, we seem to get white, pink, orange and red opae ula and you can see their bodys inside the clear parts of their shells. I was looking and some seem to have a really dark part, some a dark green and some just lightly coloured.. i dont know the technical names but does anyone know why they differ so much inside too?


sort of where the saddle would be on fresh water shrimps, only reason i ask is some of mine all have different colours there. Here is where i mean,

[Nexus6]

This has been on my mind as well, some of mine are red, some are red with clear stripes, some are red striped, some are clear, some are white, and some have a dark brown spot where the saddle is. I heard that there are different species of opaes, i wonder if thats what it is. Im trying to get all my opaes to look super red like you see in some tanks not sure how, maybe those people cull and breed only the reddest?

[mcdaney]

Here's my contribution of Opaeula shots

With visible saddle.

image.jpg (59.7 KiB) Viewed 1970 times

Without saddle.

image.jpg (43.15 KiB) Viewed 1970 times

I think we really need to study this haha! Could it be a gender differentiation? Or different species of opaeula?

[Mustafa]

This has been on my mind as well, some of mine are red, some are red with clear stripes, some are red striped, some are clear, some are white, and some have a dark brown spot where the saddle is. I heard that there are different species of opaes, i wonder if thats what it is. Im trying to get all my opaes to look super red like you see in some tanks not sure how, maybe those people cull and breed only the reddest?

Since there really aren't any long term breeders out there I really doubt anyone is culling any shrimp out there. I'm not even culling...the coloration of the shrimp depends on so many factors that a "culled" clear shrimp one day may have actually turned super bright red a few days or weeks later. The wild-caught ones (which you have been seeing) tend to be very red at first...only to lessen in intensity over time. This indicates that something they eat in the wild may actually cause the extra red coloration. Having said that..I have many captive-bred shrimp that happen to be just as dark red as the wild ones...so, there may actually be a genetic factor or factors involved here.