Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

I've got a bunch of red dark green juvies running around in my shrimp tank and I'm curious to know when they'll finally turn green? They're at least a month old and are about 1/4" long.

-Lisa

Give them a few more weeks...the color is not really a factor of time but of the environment...for some reason they feel they need to be red right now. Do you have pictures of them?

I do have pics, actually. I'll post them later today when I get some time on my laptop. I didn't even know my DG female was berried and then all of a sudden I saw these teeny little red shrimp that grew so quickly. They were the same size as my malawa juvies in about two weeks. And since there are no RCS in the tank, I realized they were DG babies.

Will they change color with a molt or will it be gradual?

-Lisa

I thought I had more pics than just this one, and it's not the greatest, but it gets the point across. You can see the DG's size compared to the juvie malawa that is much older than it is. It's got to be a DG because the other inhabitants are yellows, malawas, an amano, three vampires and for a brief time, a few orange Sulawesis. There's never been RCS in the tank. I can't wait for them to mature and breed because I started with just a few adults.

-Lisa

Hmmm...I guess you will just have to wait and see. At this size it's hard to tell for sure what kind of shrimp it is, but, as you said, it *should* logically be a dark green shrimp given your tank inhabitants. There should be some green offpsring of the dark green shrimp in the tank, too, though. In my experience only some of the offspring of the dark green shrimp turn red for a while.

Nothing that happens in my tanks is logical. There very well may be little green ones running around and I just don't see them. The red ones stick out like sore thumbs against the green plants and salt & pepper sand substrate. I had no idea I had any berried malawas or babies until one day *poof* the tank was crawling with them. I'm sure I don't see most of them because of the substrate and the plant cover. I should've thought about substrate color a little more than I did seeing as how the malawas blend in like ninjas. They're an awesome shrimp, thank you for getting them out there, btw!

-Lisa

cool shrimp, is that java moss they are on?

They're on my beloved flame moss. Java moss isn't nearly as neat looking, more of a mop.

-Lisa