Michael

Experienced freshwater shrimp keepers, how do you rank the commonly available species by difficulty? A list of easiest to most difficult would be very helpful.

Thanks!

asukawashere

How would you judge difficulty? Ease of care? Ease of breeding? i.e. Amano shrimp are extremely easy to care for, but almost impossible to breed without multiple setups, careful monitoring, and a hefty dose of luck. If the list is based on ease-of-care I'd put them at the beginning, but if it's based on breeding I'd stick them at the very end.

Anyway, generally speaking, anything in the genus Neocaridina is easy to keep. Cherries are cheapest, so I usually recommend those as a starter shrimp, but no one strain of neos is particularly more difficult than any other. They thrive and reproduce in anything between 55 and 85 degrees, soft to hard water, high and low pH, etc.

After that, I'd tend to say Malawa shrimp (Caridina pareparensis parvidentata) are easy to care for. They prefer warmer, higher pH conditions, but are still quite adaptable and breed readily.

The less inbred C. cf. cantonensis strains (low grade crystals, tigers, etc) aren't difficult if you give them proper conditions (slightly acidic, relatively soft water, cooler temps, etc.) but they do often require cooling in the summer and a power outage in July can do in whole colonies quickly.

Similarly, blue bees (Paracaridina sp.) are quite easy to breed if their basic needs are met (similar to crystals, but they're a little more tolerant of warmer temps). On the other hand, they're tiny little things, maybe half the size of Neocaridina species.

The filter-feeders (genera Atya, Atyopsis) aren't difficult in terms of parameters, but you have to have a means of feeding them. That means well-established tanks, decent water flow, and spot feeding in some cases. They'll starve to death in a new or poorly circulated tank.

Sulawesi shrimp are generally the most difficult - fragile, picky about water parameters, and hard to breed. Their price tags reflect that difficulty... but they sure are pretty!

Also somewhere at the end of this scale are the Taiwan Bees - they're so inbred that they're extremely delicate and require strict conditions to keep alive. Fertility rate is lower than their wild counterparts, adult size is smaller, and genetic deformities are common.

Michael

Great answer, thanks!

By easy, I was thinking primarily of normal care and maintenance, not necessarily reproduction. It seems that many people want to set up nano tanks with shrimp, but often start with more difficult species. When the shrimp die, everyone is discouraged.

Of course I'm also asking for myself. Neocaridina heteropoda have been relatively easy for me, and I'm thinking about which species to try next. I had not considered Malawa shrimp, but they might like conditions in my tanks.

Bananariot

Here is a list of the ones IME in rank of difficulty, with 1 being the easiest. Also A to whatever with A being the easiest (subcategories). If they're repeats of letters and numbers, it's cause they're the same difficulty.

1. Neocaridina Species:
a) Red Mutations (Rili, PFR,)
a) Blue Mutations
a) Snowball
b) Orange Mutations (Sakura, Sunkist)
c) Yellow Mutations
1. Malawa
1. Caridina Babaulti
2. Tiger (regular)
2. Tangerine Tigers
3. CRS (A, S, S+, SS, SSS+)
4. OEBT
4. BTOE
5. Taiwan Bees (BKK, BB, Panda, WR)
6. Sulawesi Cardinal

Michael

I get most of the acronyms, but what is BTOE?

asukawashere

OEBT = Orange Eye Blue Tiger, as opposed to BTOE = Black Tiger w/Orange Eyes. I think the idea was to try and avoid the inevitable confusion between blue/black by changing up the order, but really it just baffles people not used to the acronyms. Personally, I'd have used "K" to abbreviate black, which is the common practice in process color mixing to avoid that same confusion. Or maybe called them OEBD (after the German name for them, "black diamond" shrimp). That said, I wasn't in charge of making these things up LOL.

I forgot about the C. babaulti complex. The only commonly available variant thereof is the green babaulti, which isn't difficult to keep alive. They like similar conditions to Malawa shrimp, but are tougher to breed (Malawas are like guppies - their only flaw is that they're not terribly colorful)...

Also, "sunkist" shrimp can refer to two distinct species of orange shrimp - one is a Neocaridina morph (aka "orange sakura" or "pumpkin" shrimp) and its care is on par with other neos. The other is a low-order Caridina (C. cf. propinqua), also called a "mandarin" shrimp. While care of the latter is reputedly not that difficult (can't say for sure as I've never owned any), breeding is next to impossible.

TarantulaGuy

This is actually a great thread, if we could get more information on each species, i.e. water params, temps, breeding ease, etc, this would be a *fantastic* sticky.

Michael

Thanks for the clarification.

I don't mind acronyms, but they really should be spelled out the first time they are used in the post or thread, as in "black tiger with orange eyes (BTOE)". This is similar to the rules for scientific names, where the genus (and sometime species) may be abbreviated the second time they appear, as in "Neocaridina heteropoda" then "N. heteropoda".

Bananariot

Sorry, I'm too used to using the invertebrate limbo xD

Bananariot

http://shrimpkeeping.com/

That site has relative params for each. I would say breeding is never an issue, but the durability of offspring is the greatest issue. The gaps represent a change in difficulty that would be misleading if numbered consequentially.

However, some may say TBs are easy and aren't hard for example. I still believe the effort as well as the ability to regulate aquarium conditions far exceed the expectations needed to keep something like a neo or reg tiger.

1. Neocaridina Species, Malawa
2. Caridina Babaulti, Tiger (regular)
3. Tangerine Tigers, Aura Blue Tigers

(insert gap here)

4. CRS (A, S, S+, SS, SSS+)

(insert tremendous gap here lol)

4. OEBT (Orange Eye Blue Tigers), BTOE (Black Tiger Orange Eye)

(insert tremendous gap here lol)

5. Taiwan Bees (BKK, BB, Panda, WR)
6. Sulawesi Cardinal