Amano and Neocaridina Shrimp

[Alesha]

Hey y'all. 🙂

Several months ago, I got a batch of shrimp from a local breeder. I had reds, snowballs, blueberries, yellows, clears and some brownish ones. All these months later, I'm realizing that those brownish ones are amano shrimp. I always wondered why some of them had that stripe down their back! 🙄

Now the shrimp are all breeding and I have all sorts of varying degrees of color and translucence and markings. It's really a hodgepodge. But what I'm seeing is that some of the colored shrimp have that stripe down their backs. The 2nd and 3rd pic are the same shrimp.

Do amano shrimp breed with neocaridina shrimp?

Thanks,

Akconklin

[ange]

Amanos come from a different genus than the other shrimp that you purchased and will only reproduce in brackish water. Females can become berried in freshwater but the larval young will not survive.

It's rather common for Neocaridina shrimp to develop stripes down their back and it usually doesn't affect their grading (example below).

The color change/translucence is likely because the rest of your shrimp are mutations within the same species. If you mix different color mutations, it's much more common that you will have wild type offspring. This is why most people will separate their Neocaridinas based on color. If you're interested in shrimp hybridization I highly recommend that you look into Caridina shrimp species (most often Taiwan bee) as the results are a lot more appealing to most people.