Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

I have juvenile cherry reds that are starting to get eggs. I noticed one that I thought was a male has dark eggs underneath him/her. This cherry has no red coloration that I see.

Has this cherry regressed back to the wildtype coloration? If so, if I breed with another shrimp in my tank will it's offspring potentially have "red" offspring or will it definitely have only "blue" offspring?

Should I isolate this particular shrimp? If all the offspring will be "blues" I'd like to keep them separate for now. I see one shrimp that I believe is male that doesn't look like it has any coloration that I could separate with this one.

If there is no red at all (not even a hint) and the eggs are not yellow, then you have a shrimp that is "wild type." It's probably best to separate these shrimp and breed them separately if you want to keep the red coloration in your population over the generations.

Their offspring will probably not look red (but still might) but either way they will still have the genes for the red coloration. My guess is that red is a recessive trait and just won't be expressed in most cases.

Mustafa
PS: By the way...why call shrimp "blue" if they don't even have the slightest blue color on them? (not even if you use your wildest imagination!) I know someone decided to call the shrimp you are referring to "Taiwan Blue" (although they are from Hawaii), but that does not mean we have to perpetuate the misnomer.

hehe that's true....
what would be the "common" name for it then?

They don't have a common name yet. Maybe I can come up with one that actually fits them (this is how common names are made...LOL), but I usually prefer referring to them just as Neocaridina denticulata sinensis. Where there is a scientific name available, it should be used just to avoid confusion. I know scientific names are really long, but they are accurate and every shrimp species only has one scientific name (unless it gets changed), whereas *anyone* who sells shrimp can just make up a common name on the fly.

For example, one guy who sells Red Cherries in his fish store here calls them "Red Japonica" LOL. Go figure....

Mustafa

Petshrimp.com wrote:For example, one guy who sells Red Cherries in his fish store here calls them "Red Japonica" LOL. Go figure....

I love my LFS but, bless their hearts, they don't know anything about the shrimp they carry. Green shrimp are labelled "green amano shrimp" and cherries are labelled "red amano shrimp". At least they get the japonicas right.

Now imagine someone coming to this board and talking about their green amano shrimp.

Mustafa