Black Shrimp! - Page 2 - Shrimp & other Invertebrates

IndianaSam · 12-01-2006, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dhavoc

some of my wild form cherries look like the first pic. they vary in color depending on the habitat, and the ones that stay on my dark black/brown driftwood exhibit that coloring. its really striking but once i move them to anther tank with a lighter sand/wood etc, the color fades to match the new surroundings. its not permanent in my case, sadly.

I was going to say the same thing. I have some wild type Neocaridina denticulata and some of them look exactly like the picture in the first post. Therefore I would conclude that it's most likely a Neocaridina denticulata since it came in with other cherry shrimp. I wouldn't expect a rare shrimp to come in with farm bred shrimp like the cherry reds. Most likely just a mutation that caused the animal to revert to wild coloration.

Zezmo · 12-05-2006, 12:49 PM

Looking at this thread (and the accompanying one on another forum), it seems these are teh same or similar to shrimp that originally appeared in my Cherry population, and that have subsequently been breeding true in several tanks. I started with 25 pure red cherry shrimp (20 female, 5 male). These were in my heavily planted dwarf gourami breeding tank.
There are occasional information from larger cherry breeders that htey will occasionally get a less colorful (uncolored) shrimp that pops up in the population, and that you should cull these out to maintain strong reds.
For whatever reason, and I believe the reason is gouramis eating more red shrimp than black/clear, these non reds started to appear in my cherry tank. Over about 6 months, the population has drifted to about 1/2 reds and about 1/2 other colors. Except for color, the markings and look of both shrimp are identical, and they are identical to all photos of cherries that I have compared them to.
General knowledge has it that Cherrys are a color cultivar of a wild type of shrimp. Since this other shrimp was bred to fix the color at red, IMO, these are just shrimp where the color has become unfixed as they are in the wild strain. So other thatn color, there is no difference betweenthem and normal cherries. In fact they are normal cherry shrimp, just not red cherry shrimp.

Here are few shots of the ones that I have: all of these are from an originally red only population:

Zezmo · 12-05-2006, 12:52 PM

I almost forgot this image. It is a closeup of a Black Cherry male. If you look just infront of him, there is a red male who is a bit out of focus. If you look carefully you can see they have almost the same marking patterns, except for color of course.

dhavoc · 12-06-2006, 01:35 AM

yep, exactly how my wild forms change color to match the surroundings. aint evolution/adaptation great? reds stand out, so eventually, non-red, black/brown or clear will dominate as they are less likely to be eaten in a fish/shrimp tank.