Beggining Shrimp Tank

[Ayi]

Scarlet badis, licorice gourami or endlers would all work.

 

[severum mama]

Licorice gourami is pretty difficult to keep and would do best in a blackwater setup.

 

[tinyninjafishy]

What's a blackwater setup? and yeah those look cool but seem pretty hard to keep

 

[Ayi]

You could get sparkling gouramis too.

 

[tinyninjafishy]

are those big? and can I have those with shrimp? Also how many in my 5.5 gallon?

 

[Niccobacci11]

What's a blackwater setup? and yeah those look cool but seem pretty hard to keep

A black water tank is an aquarium with dark water usually made by tannins leached from drift wood or some type of leaves. Personally I like the clearer look but I have heard that this is a good way to breed some types of tetras as the acidity slowly drops.


This is a good example

 

[tinyninjafishy]

Oh WOW that's interesting. Yeah gouramis are too big for what I want to do... what other shrimp are as easy as RCS?

 

[Niccobacci11]

Oops posted the same picture twice my bad

 

[severum mama]

Aesthetics kinda go out the window with delicate species like licorice or chocolate gouramis. These are sensitive species and it's irrelevant at that point.

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[Niccobacci11]

Blue pearl
Orange shrimp
yellow shrimp
snowball shrimp

They are all in the same family just different colors

This is a blue pearl



This is an orange shrimp



This is a yellow shrimp



This is a snow ball shrimp to me it just looks like a cloudy ghost shrimp

 

[tinyninjafishy]

Oh Sweet! what wound happen if I were to mix them???

 

[Niccobacci11]

You shouldn't keep any two of these shrimp together as they can breed together and if that happens they turn a brown color it won't create something cool like so many people would hope.

 

[severum mama]

None of those should be kept together. That includes red cherry shrimp. They are all variants of Neocaridina sp. and will interbreed, resulting in wild type Neocaridina.

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[tinyninjafishy]

Wild are brown correct? why do they turn back to wild?

 

[severum mama]

Because they are selectively bred color variants. They don't exist in the wild. Drab colored Neocaridina exist in the wild. Bright coloration is disadvantageous in the wild for dwarf shrimp.

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[tinyninjafishy]

Ahhh that makes sense. So even if you breed them so the color becomes more and more dominant, if they are bred with another color they will just go back to brown?

 

[Jev12]

Not necessarily like blue velvets for example if bred with cherry shrimp won't necessarily give a wild cold but they will either be a low grade of cherry rili or a light blue velvet...and I know because I have this in one of my tanks where I have culled the red rili and blue velvet that had any red on them and put them into a tank with cherry shrimp and haven't gotten any drab colored shrimp...however that being said it isn't recommended to mix to color variants of the same species

 

[tinyninjafishy]

Oh got ya! Is it also true that males are less colorful than the females?

 

[Jev12]

Yes that is true

 

[tinyninjafishy]

So I just bought about 9 of them because I was able to get some filter media and quicken the cycle. I think 2 of them may be yellow instead of red. Should I just let them grow up until their color fully shows?