# Please tell me grade of shrimp



## Andi (Feb 6, 2008)

I received these shrimp by mail 24 hours before these pics. The pics are through Kordon bags, so not as clear as I'd like.

What grade of *red* are these? These are all in the same bag.




















































What grade of *yellow* are these? These are all in the same bag.


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## TarantulaGuy (Apr 15, 2009)

They're the grade of red known as....wait for it...."red." I suspect with shrimp (I've not delved too deeply into naming grades) that unless you actually have a "bloodline" saying these are from SS grade or what have you, you simply have some Neocaridina, and you can't officially claim otherwise. At least, that's how it works in the reptile world and the amphibian world. Shrimp folk I've noticed (myself included) tend to be a little less picky about recognizing morphs/types/etc. But looks like you have basic cherry shrimp. Excellent, hardy, variable, fun cherry shrimp.


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## Badlands54 (Dec 31, 2012)

You need to give them about 2 weeks to color back up after the stress of shipping and to acclimate. To early to tell. Yellows stress a bunch in shipping

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2


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## Mountain Maker (Jan 10, 2013)

^nailed it. Wait a week or two then they will be fully colored up, but I would say sakura grade RCS as for the yellows, yellow shrrimp


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## Bananariot (Jun 16, 2012)

I would say the reds are your typical cherry shrimp.

Sakura grades should be a bit more dark or solid.

Yellows really don't have that many grades but i think its just your regular yellow.


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

Not all shrimp species have gradations. Only bee shrimp and crystal red shrimp have grades as far as I know.


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## Bananariot (Jun 16, 2012)

Zapins said:


> Not all shrimp species have gradations. Only bee shrimp and crystal red shrimp have grades as far as I know.


Well I think when they ask for grade i think they are asking for cherry/ (sakura/fire red) / painted fire red

And then yellow is yellow or neon fire yellow


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## TarantulaGuy (Apr 15, 2009)

There is no difference though, between a cherry and a sakura. I started with a population of cherries, some were brighter red and had more complete red color than others. You can't just look at something and assign it a bloodline. It's ridiculous. I hate seeing this shrimp hobby turn into the way coral people do things. This is a super hyper batman coral! Screw that crap.


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

Well said TG that is exactly how it is. Cherries sell for less than a dollar each now, rename them sakuras or fire reds and bam, 3$/shrimp again.


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## Charrr89 (Jan 12, 2013)

When I got mine they looked like that n I have pfr


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## Andi (Feb 6, 2008)

Charrr89 said:


> When I got mine they looked like that n I have pfr
> View attachment 18874


Makes me wonder if yours are from the same place. That is the situation I am in. Its my understanding that painted fire reds are supposed to have more than 80% red on the legs and unable to see through the carapace. I can understand young males may not have the thick coverage, but I've had these for 3 weeks and the color has barely improved. In reading up on it it should be very difficult to tell males from females because the coverage of both sexes is supposed to be so strong. In photos from the seller the very small had entire red coverage. I have been keeping shrimp for several years, so its not like I don't understand that they need mature stable environments to thrive. I would have though, especially after 3 weeks, that the color should have been better. No, I'm not publicly going to say where I got them.


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## Charrr89 (Jan 12, 2013)

Yeah mine sort of stop turning more and more red.... I recently realized that


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

I am curious, for all you who believe in painted fire red shrimp would these shrimp count as fire reds?




























If you said yes they are, keep in mind these photos were taken in early 2005, 8 years ago, long before the term "super reds" ever came into use. At the time the photos were taken these shrimp were selling for around $3.25 each, so there was no need to boost sales by giving them fancy names.


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## Charrr89 (Jan 12, 2013)

Yeah I always thought they looked the same. I felt like I was being ripped off but it never crossed my mind until I recieved them


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## Mountain Maker (Jan 10, 2013)

Zapins said:


> I am curious, for all you who believe in painted fire red shrimp would these shrimp count as fire reds?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


NOT PFR status my man.


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## TarantulaGuy (Apr 15, 2009)

Mountain Maker said:


> NOT PFR status my man.


You've been sucked in by the hype and the marketing. They're all cherry shrimp. It's not even like a different color of the same species, like a "yellow" shrimp. I've had gorgeous cherries come out of the ugliest parents. I got some nasty Cherry Shrimp from PetCo years ago, and ended up with most of them looking like this









That's a basic cherry, and it looks pretty damn good. It wasn't even nearly the best looking shrimp I had in that tank either. Don't become a pawn to the marketing campaign, or this hobby is going to go down the tubes quick.


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## aluka (Feb 5, 2013)

Its not a marketing campaign. Like CRS, there is a grading system for red neos. Like CRS, they dont breed true. its like SSS crs x SSS crs will still throw some SS crs. Painted fire red x painted fire red will throw some sakuras and some normal cherries.

If you cull and selectly breed you will get painted fire reds. If you dont cull, even if you started with painted fire red, they will slowly drop to fire reds to sakuras, to cherries. Because they do not breed true, which is why you have to constantly cull to maintain a colony of pure painted fire reds. Which is also why painted fire reds are 3 dollars each and cherries are less than 1.

the shrimp hobby is not just about keeping shrimps, its mostly about breeding shrimps, seletively breeding them. And crossing them to make new an interesting new patterns. Like CRS x Oebt to make a random tibee, and after a certain amount of generations you will have some beautiful tibees if you cull them and seletively breed them.


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

I do not disagree that it is possible to make new lineages of shrimp, but I disagree that this has happened to cherries. 

The way I see it a new strain means that it breeds true. Otherwise you are simply picking nice looking shrimp and selling them under a new name to make money. 

A new strain means that the genes for alternative color patterns have been weeded out leaving virtually only shrimp with that particular characteristic. It does not mean that 99% of shrimp you get are cherries and only 1 % is sakura/whatever. 

I'd like to see documentation of each generation and the improvements made, along with the number of offspring that are cherry and sakura before accepting these new names. Without this proof there is no way to tell if its a marketing scam as I suspect or a real new shrimp.


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## TarantulaGuy (Apr 15, 2009)

"If you cull and selectly breed you will get painted fire reds. If you dont cull, even if you started with painted fire red, they will slowly drop to fire reds to sakuras, to cherries. Because they do not breed true, which is why you have to constantly cull to maintain a colony of pure painted fire reds. Which is also why painted fire reds are 3 dollars each and cherries are less than 1."

Then you don't have a "type." If it doesn't breed true, it's not genetic, therefor it is not a type. Exactly what zapins said. The only thing your doing is artificially inflating the market value and making this hobby even more inaccessible than it already is to someone just trying to get into it. I also agree that it is in fact possible to develop new color morphs, but these are genetic changes, not simply picking out the best looking cherry and renaming it a painted fire red and then charging 3x the price. It's utter nonsense. It's a Neocaridina heteropoda, nothing else. I understand that some cherry shrimp are more vivid than others, but please please please don't ruin this hobby with absurd types and bloated prices for what is in all likelihood the most commonly kept shrimp in the US.


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## wicca27 (Oct 13, 2008)

the grading on cherry shrimp goes by how dark/thick the color on the shell is. if they are the see though type they are typical cherry. the more solid the color on the shell and less transparent the higher the grade. i dont keep cherrys any more so i dont know what name is what though


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## aluka (Feb 5, 2013)

Zapins said:


> I do not disagree that it is possible to make new lineages of shrimp, but I disagree that this has happened to cherries.
> 
> The way I see it a new strain means that it breeds true. Otherwise you are simply picking nice looking shrimp and selling them under a new name to make money.
> 
> ...


I am not saying they are a different type of shrimp, i am merely saying there is a grading system. ALL painted fire red, sakura, cherries are just red neos. Likes C/B/A/S/SS/SSS+ are all just crs, but instead of using a letter system they used names. But yet, ppl pay wayy more for SSS than S. Like pfr SSS still have a small chance of throwing some SS or S grade crs. I have both a pft and a cherry colony that i keep separate. most of the offsprings from my pfr colony are bright and solid,but once in a while there will be one lower grade one. Same as SSS crs would do. That one singular cherrie or sakura grade that came from the pfr, will have to be culled or it will breed with the other pfr and their offspring will have less chance of being solid enough color to be call a pfr. i put my culls from my pfr colony with the cherries, and slowly my colony's coloration has gotten redder, as i started feeding the lighter color cherries to my betta fish.

Its the same as if u have a colonly of SSS crs, and it throw ONE S grade crs, and if you never pulled out that one S grade, you will eventually have more S, SS grade crs with your SSS crs.

its not like someone have a colony of red neos (mix of painted fire red and sakura, cherries) and just pulled out the nicer ones and sell them as painted fire red. These shrimps has been selectively bred over years to be that solid color.

So if its wrong to charge more for pfr, then shouldn't we pay the same for C/B/A/S/SS/SSS crs?

Also if you want proof on the planted tank there is a person that has taken blue velvet shrimps (a transparent blue neo shrimp) and selectively bred them over 2-3 years to now what he calls dark blue velvets. They are noticely darker than your normal blue velvets, and 90% of the offsprings will have the same coloration, and the rest are still darker than the normal ones you can get. There is literally no where else you can get blue velvets that bright blue besides buying from him.

it just upsets me that you guys call it a campaign marketing trick, when there are real people that doesn't breed/sell shrimp for a living, that spends years on selectively breeding a shrimp to a new level. I would gladly pay that person a higher price for his dark blue velvets, because he spend years on breeding them to be better and all proceeds goes back to more equipment to breed more shrimps.


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## aluka (Feb 5, 2013)

TarantulaGuy said:


> "If you cull and selectly breed you will get painted fire reds. If you dont cull, even if you started with painted fire red, they will slowly drop to fire reds to sakuras, to cherries. Because they do not breed true, which is why you have to constantly cull to maintain a colony of pure painted fire reds. Which is also why painted fire reds are 3 dollars each and cherries are less than 1."
> 
> Then you don't have a "type." If it doesn't breed true, it's not genetic, therefor it is not a type. Exactly what zapins said. The only thing your doing is artificially inflating the market value and making this hobby even more inaccessible than it already is to someone just trying to get into it. I also agree that it is in fact possible to develop new color morphs, but these are genetic changes, not simply picking out the best looking cherry and renaming it a painted fire red and then charging 3x the price. It's utter nonsense. It's a Neocaridina heteropoda, nothing else. I understand that some cherry shrimp are more vivid than others, but please please please don't ruin this hobby with absurd types and bloated prices for what is in all likelihood the most commonly kept shrimp in the US.


no one is picking out a pretty shrimp and calling it something else. What you see is years of selective breeding. All of them started a wild type neos, someone picked out the reddish looking ones, and bred them together, and then pick out the offspring with the reddest coloration and bred them together, until many many generations later to get what they call pfr today. that is a genetic change. pfrxpfr generally will result in mostly if not all pfr. A cherryxcherry will never result a pfr. You can try it. it will take you years to selectively breed cherries into pfr.


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## Lukeo85 (Nov 30, 2012)

Wow this thread really made me laugh. Thanks aluka for strightening things out. I agree 100% with everything you had to say.


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