Red Rili Shrimp

Red Rili Shrimp

These freshwater shrimps are exciting addition to your aquarium, fun to watch, they are very active and work well in tandem with Mystery Snails as the cleanup crew for your aquarium.  Red Rili Shrimp (Neocaridina Davidi) do well with peaceful fish if you are looking to build large colonies it is best to have them in their own dedicated tank.  They will still colonize with fish but even the smallest of fish won’t pass up the chance to make a snack out of a newborn shrimp.  In a thriving colony with plenty of thick cover and hiding spaces you can successfully colonize just know that your fish will opportunistically pick off newborns.  

Diet: 

 Shrimp are omnivores and will eat a variety of foods, they will eat algae, blanched vegetables, bacteria that grows on Catappa leaves, Cholla wood, and Alder cones as they break down and decompose and of course shrimp pellets.  In an established planted aquarium very, little food is required for these little shrimps.     

 Bringing the color out in your shrimp:  In the wild and in your aquarium, shrimp do their best to blend into their environment.  Darker substrates will bring out the color in your shrimp   

Plants, Plants, and more plants:

Plants will provide cover and food and will also keep your aquarium healthy and attractive, provide oxygen, absorb nitrates, the benefits are numerous.   Needless to say, your shrimp will do best in a planted aquarium.  

Breeding:

 How big is a clutch and how often do they mate?  From every month to every few months the average clutches can be between yield as many as 25 shrimp. 

Filters:

Powered filters will suck up your baby or potentially adult shrimp if they happen to wander into the intake tube.  If you are using a hang on back or canister filter be sure to install a pre-filter sponge to prevent shrimp from being sucked into the filter intake.  Sponge filters will provide the biological filtration and will not harm baby shrimp, if air driven will also provide oxygen.  

Poison Precautions:

Heavy Metals and Chemicals:

Copper is extremely harmful to all invertebrates, shrimp and snails can be poisoned by copper (many homes have copper pipes) many medications for treating fish for illness contain copper.  Chances are you have copper somewhere in your water supply feed, carbon filtering or reverse osmosis can remove copper from the water (you will want to remove the copper from the water prior to putting it into the aquarium).  You will also want to remove the chorine from your water prior to introducing it to your aquarium.  Some water conditioners that remove chlorine actually spike ammonia so reverse osmosis or carbon filtering is the safest removal process. 

Ammonia:

All Dwarf shrimp are very sensitive to ammonia, they should not be introduced into any aquarium that doesn’t have an established nitrogen cycle.  In established tanks the death of another fish or snail can spike the ammonia.  If your tank is not a dedicated shrimp tank and you have fish and or snails in the tank with the shrimp you will want to keep a close eye on your stock and test your water parameters regularly to avoid any potential ammonia spikes.  Overfeeding your shrimp can also lead to

Recommended Tank Parameters

• pH level range: 6.4 to 8.0, ideal range: 6.8 to 7.5
• Temperature range: 72° to 82° F
• Water type: kH 0-8; gH 4-14; TDS 100-300