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One thing I'll say is that it's your money, your tank, your shrimp, and your hobby, so if you want to try to have all your Caridina adapted to tap water no one can stop you from doing it. The fun of this hobby, imo, is that it's still a relatively new hobby and we're still learning so much about shrimps and their husbandry. I have tons of ideas I want to try once I have the tank space to do so. One suggestion that I thought of is that you can either start a tank with water parameters that resemble those of the breeder you get them from to properly acclimate them and reduce the initial stress from acclimating to a new tank and/or shipping. At each water change you can take out like 10% or 15% of the water and exchange it with tap water, so each time you're doing a water change you're doing a sort of slow acclimation to your tap water without a major sudden change in parameters. This may provide the least amount of stress on the shrimp and give them a better chance to adapt to your tap water over time. Just a suggestion as I feel that might give you more success than doing a single drip acclimation, and because it might be hard to find breeders who sell Caridina shrimps adapted to tap/hard water aside from the tiger shrimp species. Personally, I keep my shrimp in the parameters that're recommended for the given species/type of shrimp because I want maximum breeding (I don't have any fish in any of my shrimp tanks, I use RO remineralized water, feed shrimp-specific foods, etc.). Through several years of success, failures, and watching other people's successes and failures I feel I've learned enough to be able to successfully breed many different types of shrimps, but nothing is every 100% effective, which is most evident by seeing how different successful breeders maintain their shrimp tanks. Even though there may be a lot of similarities and differences between their methods, they may both be equally successful in keeping/breeding shrimp. So I'm not going to say that I'm an expert (far from it imo), but I like to give my opinions based on my experience and anyone who reads it can take it or leave it. Ultimately, it's your hobby and I wish you success! A more hardy Caridina shrimp that's cheaper and easily accessible will only help to encourage the growth of the hobby.

I've lurked for years and this site pops up on my Google searches from time to time, but never decided to register and post until today. My name is Charles and I usually go by Chip or Chuck. I got my first cherry shrimp in 2006 and never looked back. Still have some of that original colony, but as I wanted other colors I always set up new tanks for them. Lately I've gotten into more Caridina and tigers. I currently have 11 planted shrimp tanks ranging from 5.5 to 125 gallons. Guess I'll show off some shrimp now. Fishbone pintos: blue pinto: CRS: CBS: OEBlackT: OEBlueT: Tangerine tiger: Super Tiger: Blue dream: dark cull Neo: yellow Neo, saddled and berried:

Hi Everyone and thank you for all the suggestions and info. I went on youtube and found the video Shrimp Life made (thank you so much for letting me know!!! ) which I believe is the most helpful video along with 2 more when it comes to shrimp. I am attaching them here in case in case anyone else needs similar info in the future. I got to go find myself some snow flakes now.. I think I read somewhere in the forum that we can make them ourselves (?).. I can not remember where though.. As for the leaves, basically all leaves will do assuming that they have not been treated with pesticides, correct? Leaves from flowers or just trees?

Yup! It's understandable especially when you're just getting into the hobby that people won't be able to commit to getting a whole RO/DI system or have enough money to get a huge setup. I'd guess that most of the experienced keepers/breeders became so knowledgeable through learning from their mistakes. Personally, I feel you can learn a lot more from your failures than your successes, and with shrimp I'd expect failures every now and then, so it's important not to get too defeated if something were to happen as long as you learn from it. I've been in the hobby for several years now and I still feel like I'm learning new things. Like wyzazz said selling or giving your extra shrimp away would probably be the recommendation from most breeders. I'm not at the point where I have that many shrimp to sell, but I do plan to in the future, more so to sustain my hobby, spread the hobby, and meet other people who're as into shrimp as I am 😆 another option is to see if your local fish store might buy them from you or maybe give you store credit in exchange for them. Selling online seems like it may be difficult at first because you'll need to build up a reputation because naturally people will compare your product and ratings to another seller who's been selling for a while. For the average hobbyist I'd recommend sticking locally if you're just looking to get rid of your excess shrimp through local clubs, fish stores, friends, etc. because it sounds like the shipping process especially can be very tricky to deal with. For example, I don't plan to sell online because the process of shipping seems to have a pretty difficult learning curve so I'm planning to just sell locally. Glad to help! It can be a pretty challenging hobby at first because they're fairly different than fish, but I think that makes it feel even more rewarding when you figure it all out and get colonies of shrimps going at a time.

@Saddleback Shrimp Thanks! I feel that people are less likely to listen to you if you're firm in saying things like "it has to be this way" so I try to offer any advice that can fit in with what the person asking wants, or based on what their goals are. Ultimately, some people might just want shrimp to add to their aquascaped tank with fish because they're cool, colorful and unique so they're goal is to keep them alive over breeding, but if they wanted breeding over anything else I'd suggest not keeping them with any fish at all. But all we can do on forums like this is to offer friendly advice so it's up to each person to decide if they want to take it or go with another method. I've never tried keeping them together, but in my experience neos are much hardier and more adaptable, so I'd suspect that leaning towards lower TDS and Caridina parameters would give you the best shot. You may lose neos initially, and they may not breed for a while because they'll have to adapt, but I can't say that it's impossible to breed both together. If you can manage a slow acclimation process I'd think the shrimp would have a better chance. I'd suggest starting with a low grade RCS or just a RCS in general since they're the shrimp that's been in the hobby longest and should have the most stable genetics. Also, getting them from a reputable source means you'll be getting as healthy of shrimp that you possibly can so that they have a better chance of acclimating. The biggest thing I've learned, and what I still struggle with sometimes, is patience in this hobby. If you're able to take the time to acclimate and not rush them into adapting you'll most likely have a better chance of success.