Sulawesi Shrimp

Care at a glance

Overview

Cardinal shrimp are tiny deep-red dwarf shrimp dotted with white and tipped with white legs, and they do best in a colony grazing biofilm and algae from rock and wood. They are peaceful and delicate, so a dedicated species tank with no fish is safest. Their needs are exacting: warm, hard, alkaline, and above all steady water, since sudden changes stress them badly. Never let copper near them, as it is fatal to shrimp. Feed a fine shrimp food, biofilm, and a little algae. Once a group is settled in the right water it breeds on its own. A stable tank of 20 liters or more suits a colony.

In the wild

Cardinal shrimp are found only in Lake Matano on Sulawesi, an ancient lake whose water is warm, hard, mineral-rich, and alkaline all year. To keep them, a tank has to hold those conditions closely: a temperature from about 26 to 31 c and a pH from 7.5 to 8.5, usually built from remineralized water and a mineral-rich substrate or rock. Warm water holds little oxygen, so gentle surface movement helps. Rocks and wood covered in biofilm give the shrimp both cover and grazing.

Good to know

Caridina dennerli is a dwarf shrimp in the family Atyidae, endemic to a single Indonesian lake and listed as critically endangered in the wild. Adults are very small, only about 2 to 2.5 cm. Like other Caridina it breeds fully in fresh water with no larval stage: a berried female carries a small clutch of around fifteen eggs that hatch as miniature shrimp. In a stable tank at the right parameters a colony renews itself steadily, so breeding is easy once the shrimp are truly settled.

Did you know

Cardinal shrimp want the opposite of most dwarf shrimp: warm, hard, alkaline water rather than cool and soft. They live naturally in only one lake, Matano, which is why steady Sulawesi-style water is the whole secret to keeping them.

Related species

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