Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

"This shrimp will readily cross with the Bee Shrimp, Tiger Shrimp and probably with the Bumblebee Shrimp, so they should not be housed in the same aquarium to avoid hybrids. "

Is this true and if so, has anyone witnessed any cross breedings, and what they looked like?

Yes, it's true. Otherwise I would not have written it down...

I have not witnessed crossbreeding firsthand yet (since I try to not keep different species together), but others have. Especially in Germany there have been many reports. Actually, some people in Germany looked at the Bumblebee shrimp under the microscope and found out that at least some of the individuals could be hybrids. What other species they hybridized with is still a mystery as of yet.

As to the bee shrimp and crystal red shrimp...it's not surprising that they can interbreed since they are the same species. The Crystal Red is just a color mutation of the bee shrimp. If you cross both varieties, their offspring are either red-white or black-white, but carry the genes for both.

Not enough is known about valid shrimp species in general, to even start speculating about the existence of hybrids and what the parents of those hybrids might be.

Take care,
Mustafa

I,ve seen Hybrids.....
I keep bumblebee shrimp and bee shrimp in one tank so I expect to see a lot more of them. Hybrids of these two species often have a dark head like the bumblebee, but are striped like the bees. Their colors are darker than those of the bee-shrimps and i have not seen the orange of the bee-shrimps tail in the hybrids.