Help Breeding Red Cherry Shrimp

The first thing to check is that you have both males and females, not all the same.
I've never been much good as sexing cherry shrimp by looking at their abdomens, but females are meant to be rounded underneath and males straight.
At certain times, females will show a saddle shaped mark on their backs. This is the ovaries filling with eggs. Males, obviously, don't get saddles.
Once the eggs become mature, they move down to the undercarriage, then if they are not fertilised they are dropped (I think). At this time the female does not have a saddle, but one will develop again.

Have you ever seen any of your shrimps carrying eggs? They look like a cluster of berries between the swimmerets under the abdomen. If you have seen this, it means the shrimps are breeding but something is happening to the baby shrimps.


Other than that, I don't know what to suggest, except maybe to go out and see if you can find a berried female in a shop. That way you'll know you have at least one female and hopefully the eggs will hatch giving you lots of babies, which should contain both sexes.



My cherry shrimp breed all the time. They are in a 50 litre tank (60 x 30cm footprint). The pH is 7.4 and the hardness 6 german degrees. Temperature 23^oC. Sand substrate. Bogwood, and redmoor wood and a tangled root style plastic ornament, with java fern, anubias, bolbitis and hornwort attached to/draped through the decor. Alder cones scattered over the substrate. Food - Hikari shrimp cuisine (and New Life Spectrum flakes and crushed pellets for the fish which the shrimps also eat). Tank mates pygmy cories, habrosus cories, Boraras urophthalmoides and B maculatus. [Yes the tank is a bit overstocked but the fish are very small]

I used to use beta g but only use it now if I add new shrimps. It's almost out of date!

In that case, you need a male.
Either go shopping for a cherry shrimp with the flattest under-abdomen you can find, or look for a female carrying eggs. They are quite easy to spot as little balls between the female's swimmerets (under the abdomen). Yes that will give you another female but some of those eggs must hatch into males.

Well, looked in the tank this morning ready to feed the CPD's and shrimp and noticed i had lost another shrimp, but such is the circle of life and to my amazement, a shrimp pressed her belly to the glass while scavaging for food and showed me a clutch of yellow eggs in her undercarrige. Fingers crossed now they hatch and i'll be more carefull with the future water changes, couldnt be happier.

I usually take the water from the rear compartment of the aquanano tank where the heater and pump live, so hopefully ill not be anywhere near the young ones, though i do use a white polystyrene packing box that some shrimp from sharnbrook shrimp came in, so that will be usefull to inspect the water before pouring it away.

Yeah i have dark sand as a substrate and i hoover bits of fish and snail bob out now and again.

Well I still have a pregnant female but I have now lost all my shrimp except 2, pretty disheartened at this stage. My nitrate level out the tap is around 40ppm and I'm wondering if this could be a bit high for them.

The shrimp are plain red cherries, Iv ordered some floating plants to give them more things to crawl over and hopefully reduce the nitrates a little. I'd like another plant to put at the back of the tank but not sure what to get.

I'm a bit worried of buying plants and getting unwanted snails, I might get a Java fern as Iv read there quite easy to grow.