shrimp and snail ID help

[harmy4993]

ok i was looking at my tank when i spotted a shrimp that didnt look like my other red cherry shrimp. it wasw about the size of my two biggest rcs but it was mostly light brown with a darker brown strip running up the back. i went to go get my camera but it disappeared into the java moss i think.

well anyways i had my camera and finally saw 1 of the 2 snails i knew was in there. the snails came in with the plants. so what kind of snail do i have?

 

[new2betas]

kinda fuzzy picture, but it looks like a regular old pond snail to me....the shrimp you describe sounds like a male rcs

 

[harmy4993]

yes i agree on the picture quality. you have me get pictures of people playing paintball or rc racing and i do good photos. you get me to do a picture of a slow moving snail then i have issues.

 

[JohnPaul]

ok i was looking at my tank when i spotted a shrimp that didnt look like my other red cherry shrimp. it wasw about the size of my two biggest rcs but it was mostly light brown with a darker brown strip running up the back.

Hmm...that doesn't sound good to me. Where did you get your shrimps? From a local breeder, a LFS, online via auction, etc?

Having raised hundreds and hundreds of RCS, I never once had any that exhibited a brownish color. Males tend to be clear (with small red spots usually), but brown is another thing entirely. What worries me is that it might be a "naturally" colored RCS. The red coloring found on RCS is a very rare genetic morph that has been selectively bred by hobbyists to display that red coloring rather than the natural brown. However, the brown is the dominant color and red is a recessive. So if your brown shrimp (presumably a male, though it could be a female too) mates with one of your red ones, most (if not all) of the resulting babies will also be brown. If that goes on for a few successive generations, suddenly you are going to find that your tank that you want to be RCS will be a few RCS and lots of plain looking brown shrimp.

Thus, if I were you, I would keep my eyes open and net out that brown shrimp first chance you get. Then if you get a good clear picture of it and post it here (or in a more specialized shrimp forum) you can get somene with a lot of experience to give a positive ID of it. If it ends up not being a Neocaridina (the genus RCS belong to), then it would be safe to put back in your tank. Otherwise, you're going to have to move it to another tank permanently or risk losing your entire RCS colony to their natural brown color.

 

[harmy4993]

i got it from a friend of a friend who has about 200 shrimp of diffrent breeds in his tank.

 

[JohnPaul]

i got it from a friend of a friend who has about 200 shrimp of diffrent breeds in his tank.

Maybe your friend could ID it then. The important thing you need to establish is that it is not a Neocaridina of any type. If there's any doubt, better safe than sorry (IMO).

 

[harmy4993]

uploading pics now.

 

[harmy4993]

ok here are some pics

 

[SpeedEuphoria]

That is different.

I ditto everything JohPaul said.

I have read that mixing like RCS with other colors in the same family will breed brown shrimp.

So if it is in the same family then I would remove it as you will likely have many more brown shrimp in the future.

I think it is a male from the pic, but I'm no shrimp-ologist(expert, lol).

Also like said above, better safe then sorry, meaning unless you want brown shrimp, either sacrifice it or move it to a separate bowl/tank. Heck you could move it to a bowl, then do an experiment by adding a red female and see if they breed or what color the babies are.

 

[JohnPaul]

Hmm...I'm FAR from an expert, but that doesn't look like a Neocaridina to me. But I wouldn't trust myself to be sure. I certainly would ask the friend whom you got the shrimp from to see if he/she knows what it is. In the meantime, I'll see if I can make any progress here in getting a positive ID.

 

[harmy4993]

althou that one is the biggest of the group i have a couple more 2-4 total that have less red or look like that one but smaller.

 

[harmy4993]

i found this Petshrimp.com -- All about shrimp while googling Neocaridina because i had no idea what that was. seems to be a cousin of the rcs and they can breed together.

This shrimp is the wild variety of the Snowball Shrimp. The females have a grayish coloration, which can range in intensity from very light grey to an extremely dark, almost black gray. Some individuals also have a whitish-cream stripe on their backs (as in the picture above). The males are also gray but usually less so than them females. However, they are not almost see-through like the males of their cousins the Red Cherry Shrimp. Although the Snowball Shrimp was developed from this wild variety, this shrimp is still very rare even in Germany (where the Snowball Shrimp mutation occured) and virtually non-existent elsewhere. It should, however, become more widespread with time as it will breed just as easily as the Red Cherry Shrimp if given the right conditions. Like the Red Cherry Shrimp, these animals display a wide range of temperature tolerance, which can range from the 40s to the 90s.

Due to the fact that it is a Neocaridina species, it will most likely hybridize with the Red Cherry shrimp and other Neocaridina species.​

​

 

[SpeedEuphoria]

Oh yeah, the snail looks like a pond snail to me also. I just had a couple(2 at least) that I got with my last plants. I let them get bigger, as last time I destroyed them at the 1st site. They look like yours, I assumed from pics it is/was a pond snail(even though I was told it should be a ramshorn snail). So today I threw one away from my 10G. The other is in the 55G and as soon as I see it , I'm throwing it away also.

 

[harmy4993]

Oh yeah, the snail looks like a pond snail to me also. I just had a couple(2 at least) that I got with my last plants. I let them get bigger, as last time I destroyed them at the 1st site. They look like yours, I assumed from pics it is/was a pond snail(even though I was told it should be a ramshorn snail). So today I threw one away from my 10G. The other is in the 55G and as soon as I see it , I'm throwing it away also.

so should i remove them now? and what do i do with them when i take them out of my tank? can i flush them? or take them outside and squish them?

 

[JohnPaul]

Oh sorry, I didn't clarify enough about Neocaridina. Neocaridina is a genus of freshwater shrimp; several of the most popular shrimp in the hobby are from this genus. Among the shrimp you often see are:

Red Cherry Shrimp (formerly Neocaridina denticulata sinensis, recently reclassified as Neocaridina heteropoda var. "red")
Yellow Shrimp (same as above, except var. "yellow")
Snowball Shrimp (Neocaridina zhangjiajiensis var. "white")
Blue Pearl Shrimp (Neocaridina zhangjiajiensis var. "blue")

So the point is, any of the Neocaridina species can interbreed with each other. If that happens, the result is always (or, almost always) a reversion back to the natural brown color. Thus you should never have more than one of the above types of shrimp in the same tank. However, any of the above four species can be safely kept with most of the other freshwater shrimp out there, including Crystal Red, Crystal Black shrimp, Tiger, Blue Tiger, Bee, and Golden Bee shrimp (all color variations of Caridina cantonensis), Bumblebee shrimp (Caridina sp. "Bumblebee"), Malaya shrimp (Caridina sp. "Malaya"), and the Hawaiian Red shrimp (Halocaridina rubra). Just to name a few!

 

[harmy4993]

well right now it wouldnt bother me if they breed and came out brown. i paid rougly $1.25 each for the shrimp and i dont concider the brown ones ugly. if anything they seem to be more active then the red ones i have.

the issue could/would come if i ever get the red crystal shrimp i want. if i got those i would have to seperate them.

 

[SpeedEuphoria]

so should i remove them now? and what do i do with them when i take them out of my tank? can i flush them? or take them outside and squish them?

Its up to you, the main reason I got rid of mine(getting rid of) is because I am getting some blue Briggs snails and I want to be able to tell the eggs/babys apart so I can control the population better. If I have both, and kill babies, then I could be killing the Briggs instead of teh pond snails, then I would be upset(not really).

I just hear they can easily breed to great numbers and since I have not experienced it, I would rather stop the population explosion sooner than late since its much less work.

Ask Dottie how many she has, I think she has tons(thought they were pond snails)

 

[SpeedEuphoria]

well if they breed with RCS, then they will not be an issue with CRS as they are different family's and cannot breed.

So if they do not breed with your RCS, then I would not get any other species of shrimp as they may breed

 

[harmy4993]

its amazing how much stuff i dont know and i dont even know i dont know it.

 

[SpeedEuphoria]

its amazing how much stuff i dont know and i dont even know i dont know it.

Yes indeed, you will deff learn many things from this hobby.

Oh yeah I forgot to put in my last post. On the snails. Today the one I removed was larger so I didnt feel like squishing it against the glass and also since it was larger its easier to remove from the tank. So I took it out, and looked at it under a magnifying glass for a couple minutes, then threw it in the backyard.

I deff wont flush anything, thats just me. Its either garbage or outside or squish on the glass with small paper towel, then wipe and into the garbage. This was live so I thought if may crawl out of the garbage, lol.