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Shrimp

Why Shrimp

Cause shrimp are super cool! They do a lot of stuff that is just fun to watch (they can even ride snails into battle), they are not harmful to basically anything else in the tank, and they are not that much harder to take care of than most beginning fish (Cherry is probably gonna get mad for me saying that, but it's probably just cause she did such a good job of helping me that I think so).

Shrimp Types

Neocaridina

The coolest shrimp around! There are many types of these shrimp, and there are even entire charts dedicated to breeding them to get specific color patterns and traits. They are, as far as I am aware, the hardiest of the shrimp on this page, and also the coolest because they provide very little bioload but take away a lot of algae and other bad stuff, making the net positive to the tank.

Neocaridina Breeding Chart, showing all of the different varieties of shrimp that are possible

Editor's Note: Ask Cherry if it is actually net positive or closer to neutral

Caridina

Coming soon! I have not ever seen nor interacted with these kinds of shrimp yet, so I have no thoughts.

Amano (Caridina multidentata)

I don't know much about these shrimp besides what I have locally. We have Ghost Shrimp that are sold as cleaners and feeders, so their genetics are likely bad and they are fairly sickly, but CRAZY cheap and look really cool. Cherry and I collectively have bought 10 of them and only one has died after about 2 weeks (likely one of the second batch we put in got shocked and died due to lack of hardiness). I am also not sure if this is true of all of them, or just the Ghost Feeders I get, but they also seem to be QUITE A BIT bigger than Neocaridina.

Amano shrimp like nominally colder water, and are a bit more temperamental on their parameters, requiring all of the "bad params" to be closer to zero than their counterparts. They make up for this slightly more temperamental lifestyle in the fact that they MUNCH. Like these dudes love to munch munch munch. They eat so much algae relative to how much waste they produce that it is a no brainer as long as you don't have predators for them in the tank.

Shrimp Tips

White Ring of Death

White Ring of Death
If a shrimp dies and has the white ring all the way around their body at one point, that means the died from the stress of a failed molt. It is likely nothing you did wrong, just nature, luck, and bad genetics.

My Shrimp

Neocaridina

Amano