# RCS are white



## newbie314 (Mar 2, 2007)

Seems like alot of my RCS are white.
Is this normal?
I have what I assume are three females, one really cherry red, and the other two are kinda red.
All the males seem white if not slightly yellow.
Did I get a weak strain of red cherry shrimp?
Yellow version coming through.
I believe some are newly hatch (look 1/2 size of regular)
The shrimp, fish and dwarf crayfish look fine, lots of food in the gut, and active.

Any ideas?
Shrimp have been in the tank since September.


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## Purrbox (Jun 1, 2006)

It's not uncommon for males to have little to no red on them. Reguardless of sex they will get more intense color with age. Since yours sound like they're still quite young, they probably just need more time to finish coloring up.


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## southerndesert (Oct 14, 2007)

Do you mean "white" or just clear and lacking much red? If the latter the statement above holds, but if your shrimp are getting milky inside it could be a sign of trouble.

Once my colony got established I began having berried females that were showing little red yet and berried very young, but they color up as they get older.

Bill


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## Amazon_Replica (Nov 24, 2007)

Yea, most of my females are deepr red, it tends to be the males that dont favor the red early on. I have some that are black, some are grey-ish, and some are clear with a tinge of either red, blue black, or yellow. Once they are established and fully comfortable with their home, they will be fine.
Happy shrimp are colorful shrimp. Variety of foods and multiple hiding places. They are not in a tank with aggressives?


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## newbie314 (Mar 2, 2007)

Males are clear.

The shrimp seem fine. In with glow-light tetras.
The shrimp actually bosses them around.
Except the drwarf crayfish. They the boss.


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## Jookie (Sep 30, 2003)

I also believe that lighting makes them color up. I have had deep red RCS go back to a lighter color in a low light tank, and then redden back up in a high light tank. Could be some other factor going on, but it is a possibility.


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## newbie314 (Mar 2, 2007)

Might be right.
I'm using 4200k lighting (40w total for the 20g).
I have afew cherries that are getting red.
One of them is almost blood red.



Jookie said:


> I also believe that lighting makes them color up. I have had deep red RCS go back to a lighter color in a low light tank, and then redden back up in a high light tank. Could be some other factor going on, but it is a possibility.


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## MartialTheory (Dec 20, 2007)

Another thing is that your shrimp can have poor genes.

Unfornatly I had bought some shrimp a while ago and although they were red, they never became red as I have seen them online. In fact some were pretty clear. 

Then I found another person locally that was very nice and had to sell there shrimp and plants since they were moving. They were much more redder and the tone was much better too. I keep them seperate in case if they interbreed and I lose color. 

So far it just seems that the ones i had before just had some bad genes.


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## feiyang (Jan 27, 2007)

True, some cherry shrimps have poor gene, some people actually say those are Singapore Cherry Shrimps! A bit different from RCS.


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