Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

One of my juvie cherry shrimp grew up brown and not red. She just molted and is now carrying eggs. She was so brown that I never saw the saddle. The eggs are a deep olive color and not the creamy yellow of the other shrimp I'm going isolate her and see what her young turn out to be. I'm thinking this is a throw-back to the wild type. Anyone else had this happen?

Hmm....did you introduce any new red cherries to your tank in the past month or so? Sometimes males and females of the wild-type are mixed in with shipments of red cherries from asia, or other hobbyists have both wild-type and red cherries in the same tank without realizing they have the same species (and they they sell them). That's more likely than a throwback. I had seen some aquabid auctions where people were trying to sell red cherries, but I could tell by looking at the pictures they provided of their shrimp tanks they have some wild types mixed in their populations. Those pictures disappeared (now you see just red cherries) but the same people are selling still.

In any case, the brown ones are attractive, too, so you might just want to isolate any brownish shrimp you discover in a different tank. The problem with removing possible males of the wild type is that they look almost exactly the same as the males of the red cherry form. It takes a trained eye to even begin to tell the difference, but even with a trained eye you're never 100% sure. So, for all you know, you might actually have some "brown" males swimming around in there without even realizing it.

This shrimp was a hitchiker on a batch of cherry shrimp I got off ebay. They were mostly adult cherries, but there was this little guy there too only about 1/4". As she got older she went tottaly brown and now this.

Yes, I'm quite happy with her and will put here in her own tank. I see no difference at all with the other males. Guess I'll just have to wait to see what comes from her and the 90 or so babies now running around in this tank. If I see some browns come out of that batch, I'll know.

Wouldn't most of the babies be brown if this was the case? Isn't the brown color dominant?

badflash wrote:This shrimp was a hitchiker on a batch of cherry shrimp I got off ebay.

Ah...just like I thought.

Wouldn't most of the babies be brown if this was the case? Isn't the brown color dominant?

The first generation offspring of a wild color female who mates with a red male would all look "non-red" but not completely like the wild female. The next generation would show some red animals. Genetics in Neocaridina seems to be more complex than in Crystal Red and bee shrimp (which follow just simple mendelian genetics). With Neocaridina you will get animals in the first generation that look kind of "in-between." For example, you will probably get some animals that will look greenish-brownish with yellow egg production in their ovaries ("yellow-saddle"). But yes, the red is recessive and over time the red shrimp will decrease in number if you keep both varieties in the same tank. In a captive environment it might take quite some time though before all red shrimp disappear (years). In the wild, the red shrimp would be more conspicuous and hence picked up by predators more easily in addition to having a recessive coloration.

The wild ones act wild too. Looks like I may have more than one. I'll start a colony.

badflash wrote:The wild ones act wild too. Looks like I may have more than one. I'll start a colony.

The question is if these "wild" red cherries are really Neocaridina denticulata sinensis or if they are mixes of some other "wild type" neocaridina with a red N. d. sinensis (red cherry). In that case they would be real hybrids. There are over 10 different Neocaridina species and people have no idea what species they have when they get a "wild" red-cherry looking shrimp from the pet store. So, if you ever distribute any of these shrimp to others mention the possibility that they might actually be real hybrids.

Does it looke like the shrimp in theis thread?

viewtopic.php?t=1218

TKD

Body is the same, but mine is just plain brown.