Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

I got 6 of these about 3-4 years ago. Since then they've been very happy in the bottom of my 60 liter tank. Unlike the bumblebee I kept earlier these reproduce easily and in big numbers. I suspect that there's at least 30 of them at any time. Occasionally I give some of them away. Did some searching and the only description that seems to fit is Neocaridina heteropoda which I understand is pretty much a description to fit several uncoloured varieties.
In my tank I'm now seeing mostly colourless, greenish and more dark brown colours. Not sure if it's the shrimp adapting colour to the background since the dark brown seems to graze on the bogwood most of the time.

Recently I took my macro lens and shot a few pictures:


DSC_9413 by j_wijnands, on Flickr


DSC_9421 by j_wijnands, on Flickr


DSC_9433 by j_wijnands, on Flickr

Any information on these?

It's really hard to tell by just looking at the pictures in this case, but they are likely some type of Neocaridina sp.. Not all "wild color" Neocaridina are N. heteropoda. That's just one of over 11 species of Neocaridina sp. Various types of Neocaridina spp. enter the pet trade under various names, so your shrimp could be any one of those species. Your shrimp don't look like typical wild type Neocaridina heteropda or any type of Neocaridina denticulata I have seen. Where did you get them from originally, and what was their trade name when you bough them?

Ah, Mustafa, glad you stopped by, was hoping you would.

IS there anything you'd need to hazard a better ID guess?

I never bought these, I was given these by a friend, she said something like "I'm not sure what kind of shrimp these are but they keep my tank clean and don't bother anyone" and gave me 6 for free. That was about 3-4 years ago. I've asked her where she got them but she also never bought these.

The best guess I (and pretty much anyone) can give by looking at the pictures is that they are a species of Neocaridina. Other than that they would have to be examined under a microscope to determine what species they are. The additional difficulty with shrimp Neocaridina spp. that have been in the hobby for that long (and nobody knows their exact origin) is that they may actually be hybrids of several Neocaridina spp.. If someone asks, just say that they are a species of Neocaridina...you can't really do much more at this point. Anyone telling you that that it "this or that species for sure" just by looking at the pictures doesn't know what he/she is talking about.

Still an interesting puzzle though.