lampeye wrote:I received some cherry shrimp a bit ago, and I have a few questions I can't seem to find the answers for.
That's usually the beginning of a long addiction.
First, the shrimp I have are young, but is it safe to assume that a cherry with evenly distributed red specks (enough to give a noticeable rosy hue) is a female?
No. It's extremely hard, and impossible for all practical purposes, to tell genders in young red cherry shimp. Both males and females can have those red specks when young. Some young have more, some less, regardless of gender. I have had very red looking young turn into males and very color young turn into females. Their colors usually adjust gender-specifically (i.e. females more colorful) once they become adults.
Some of my shrimp are small, but much redder than other shrimp that are the same size or larger.
See above.
I've also noticed some shrimp with significant red coloration on the scale portion of antenna 2, and others lacking any in that area, this among shrimp of the same size - another clue to gender?
This sounds like normal color variation to me. Red cherry shrimp (like many shrimp species) can be extremely variable with regards to coloration, patterning and color intensity depending on mood and environment.
I assume that while a shrimp with a "saddle" is always female, a shrimp without one may be female as well. Is this assumption correct?
Correct.
Especially with young adults one can get fooled pretty easily. Some seemingly "male" shrimp start developing eggs in their ovaries and gain more color....obviously females.
Finally, is a 10% loss of shrimp after shipping/acclimation the norm, or cause for alarm?
The norm for shipping related losses should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 0%. Healthy animals shipped properly will arrive alive. If the animals were stressed out to begin with, then they are more likely to die in transit. As for losses after the shrimp are released into your tank, there are two possibilities. If the shrimp were stressed out and non-healthy animals to begin with and your package already arrived with a few dead animals, then you are more likely to see more animals dying over next few hours, days etc. It takes some time and observation to figure out if animals are healthy looking or not, but after a while you will get the hang of it. Another "death" culprit might just be water parameters in the tank (even stuff that you can't/dong usually measure). Even if your fish were doing fine in a given tank does not mean that the shrimp will be fine, too. Quite a bit has been written about possible death causes due to environment, so it's probably a good idea to look up the info if you suspect that there is something wrong in your tank.
In the few days after I received a group of 20 shrimp, I lost 2, possibly 3. After being in the hobby as long as I have, I have "acceptable loss" figures for some fish - for example, losing 20% of many lampeyes (after import of wild fish! long-term aquarium residents should have losses near zero), while maddening, is not an indicator of disease or water chemistry issues - what's the norm for cherry shrimp? From reading the forum, I see that 0 losses is typical, but at what point should I become concerned?
If the red cherries come from a breeder with good stock, then the losses should be 0. Red cherries are not wild-caught, as they are an articificially selected color mutation, but there are farms in asia that breed them in large numbers. Many of the red cherries offered in stores and by known importers online are farm bred shrimp. For all practical purposes they should be treated like wild-caught imported shrimp. The figures for losses of imported shrimp are terrible as the exporters and importers have no idea how to ship the shrimp, how to keep them alive and healthy while holding them etc..etc. So, 100% losses are not a rarity. Having a box arrive with 50% to more than 80% dead and deyacing shrimp arrive at the airport is more the norm than the exception. You can imagine that the survivors in such bags aren't doing that great either, so most, if not all, of them will die within hours or days. It's really a rarity to receive a box of good looking imported shrimp. Many "shady" sellers out there will try to sell their imported shrimp as soon as possible after arrival to unsuspecting people to make a quick buck. Once the shrimp die in the buyers' tanks one can always blame the buyer.
Very shady, unethical and short-term thinking, but still quite common.
That's the reason I do not ever offer imported shrimp on my website. I just can't justify killing so many animals and offering sub-par animals to the public. And let's not forget that many shrimp are actually endangered, whithout having made it to endangered lists yet as not much attention is paid to small invertebrates. I just don't want to contribute to that. Captive breeding is the long term solution for the hobby.
Hope this helps.
