Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

Has anyone actually tried keeping snowball shrimp with cherries? I have a few of the wild color, and wondered whether they would actually interbreed.

Yes, they can interbreed. For more see article on http://www.garenele-online.de -> Magazindownload -> Ausgabe 2 - März 2006

I kept a female red cherry with a colony of snowballs for a few months. Although she always developed eggs in her ovaries, she never became ovigerous (i.e. she dropped the eggs) whereas all the female snowballs became ovigerous all the time.

This does not necessarily mean that they cannot interbreed, but only means that the two species are not extremely closely related, although related nevertheless. Maybe the male snowballs just choose female snowballs over red cherries if given the choice. Maybe they would settle on a female red cherry if she were the only female in the tank. Or...maybe male red cherries can fertilze a female snowballs but male snowballs can't do the same with female red cherries due to differences in sexual organs. Lots of maybes....bottom line is that I have neither the space or the time at this point to conduct all possible experiments to see if these species will interbreed. On their species description I am not excluding the possibility that they can interbreed due to the reports from Germany. But despite these reports, even in Germany there are people who have kept these species together and not reported any weird looking hybrid offspring.

So, the final jury is still out.

When I get my snowball shrimp population to a good number I plan to keep them with some RCS and see if they interbreed. I am doing this because this is a question I and others want an answer to . If anyone else has a definate answer please let us know.