I just love these shrimp and their ability to change color intensity....There are several colors in the females and they seem to be able to change the color intensity at will, sometimes dark blue to almost black and the other colored shrimp do this as well with different shades with mood or just because... This is the darkest I have seen one get.
These shrimp saddle as berried and berry again within days or a week after giving birth. Survival rate is lower than I'd like to see for some reason although I have about 50 young visible in the 10 gallon and surly more. I will be moving them to a 20 Long soon and hope to see the same results I did with my CRS...Instant population boom in the larger tank. Naturally that would be expected and I am moving my shrimp room soon to accommodate more and larger tanks in the 20 to 40 gallon range. I am remodeling one of my rental cabins next door to my house into a shrimp room... I have run out of room in my house already
As long as the conditions are right for them, their survival rate can be close to 100%. Until I screwed up my water by skipping some water changes and feeding too much, and most importantly, letting the string algae rot away, that was my survival rate. How can you tell that the water is close to perfect? The shrimp will be running around in almost a frenzy and picking *really* quickly. That's the case with all the dwarf shrimp by the way. So..in a way, you can tell by the behavior of the adults if the young will survive or not.
John, my shrimp showed intense coloration on light substrates, too. I have seen the pictures of your shrimp and I think there is something up with your tank conditions. These guys, like most shrimp, don't show off their colors if they are not feeling well. If your shrimp are kind of sluggishly picking and hiding most of the time, then my suspicions about your tank not being all too healthy are probably true.
Thank you for for the information and all my shrimp are indeed very active as you describe and there are a good number of young everywhere in my tank. It just seemed that by the size of the egg mass the females were carrying that there should be more. I will keep a closer eye on water quality and see if that makes a difference for me as I am at times guilty of not making my water changes as often as I should.
I have a couple of Dark Malaya and the rest at the Lighter color in Picture 1.
I ran out of tank space, so I have Blue Pearls in with my Malaya, I have young running around the tank.
But I could not tell you which is which at this time.
I quess I will step up the water changes and see how it goes.
I always did to many water changes in the past, I may have cut back a little to Far.
I have a couple of Dark Malaya and the rest at the Lighter color in Picture 1.
I ran out of tank space, so I have Blue Pearls in with my Malaya, I have young running around the tank.
But I could not tell you which is which at this time.
I quess I will step up the water changes and see how it goes.
I always did to many water changes in the past, I may have cut back a little to Far.
John
At least two shrimp do not interbreed. I know what you mean about too many water changes.
I would like to thank Mustafa for getting these Shrimp into the Hobby, so when I run out of tank space.
I can add the Malaya into a tank and not worry about them cross breeding.
It make life a little easier.
