The new Caridina babies are getting bigger and it’s a little easier to see what they look like. Because they have a stripey appearance I thought they were wine red panda children but they have no real white colouration anywhere on them. To me they look like tangerine tiger shrimp that have some black stripes.
tangerine #1, baby above, assassin snail left
tangerine #2
wine red panda
crystal red
Potential parents
new shrimp with possible parent
Here are the potential parents (I can’t tell the sexes of any of these) and their attributed species:
- 2 tangerine tigers (C. cantonensis)
- 6 wine red pandas (C. logemanni)
- 1 crystal red (C. logemanni)
The absence of white makes me think these are not straight-up wine red panda x wine red panda, or wine red panda x crystal red – the orangey-translucent overall aspects suggest the tangerine tigers are involved, which also fits with reports that tangerine tigers are generally easy to breed. I suppose a straight-up tangerine x tangerine cannot be ruled out, but I suspect these are cross-breeds, or ‘Mischling’ (German for ‘mixed’ – has a rather unfortunate etymology) as they are sometimes known in the hobby. They do look mostly like ‘tangerine #2’ in the images above, but with more prominent black stripes.
Shrimpy zoomers!
From time to time the shrimp will “go crazy” and zoom around inside the tank. One common interpretation is that this is behaviour exhibited by males when a breedable female has emitted pheromones into the water looking for a mate. I noticed both of the tangerine tigers and also the crystal red exhibiting this behaviour which makes me provisionally think they are all males.