# Keepers of the RCS



## Raymond S. (Jan 11, 2013)

I have a few in a fairly well planted ten G tank. There are three that are the red over their complete body.
Those also seem to be the oldest ones. The others all seem to have mutated to a lighter color and/or
various amounts of color absent parts of their bodies. Where the color absent is looks clear like a ghost
shrimp and the color is usually along the front edges of each(here's where I have no clue what to call) of
the saddle parts of their shell giving it a red/clear tiger pattern. Only the solid color shrimp seem to berry.
But months back I'd occasionally see tiny baby shrimp. But none in the past few months.
Any idea's about this ? Could I actually have a tank full of only female shrimp ? The eggs are orange and gone
after a few days and the younger ones(up to perhaps 3/4 grown) never seem to berry. How old do they
need to be before they will berry ? Is 3/4 grown not enough ?
My primary interest is the color of the eggs. Shouldn't they change colors if fertile ?


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Do you know how to tell a female from a male? There are very distinct differences and you should be able to sex all of them if they are nearly full-grown. Usually females are darker in color, true in many species.


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## Raymond S. (Jan 11, 2013)

jrman83 said:


> Do you know how to tell a female from a male? There are very distinct differences and you should be able to sex all of them if they are nearly full-grown. Usually females are darker in color, true in many species.


I only seem to know how to tell on Ghost shrimp. On those the males actually have color. The antenna and other parts of the face aria have
some on them, usually red but it's something you would need to know about before you looked for it as it's very subtle. Often has accents
on the tail also.
On the CRS I haven't a clue. Since you said darker however, those three older ones I have are dark red and solid color(for the females)
but almost all the other CRS that I have are much smaller and that tiger color patern that has portions of those saddles of shell missing
most of their color except for the front edge of it. This is the largest of my not fully red ones.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

You have to go by body shape first. That one looks female to me from that pic.


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## jccaclimber2 (May 6, 2012)

That one is female.

Edit: My reasoning being that the back of the body bows out rather than in on the bottom.


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## jccaclimber2 (May 6, 2012)

Note that in addition to the females having stronger coloration the back half of the males is slimmer while the back half of the females bulges outward. This is true even when they don't have eggs. Saddled and berried shrimp are obviously female, but many of my females are too opaque for me to get the saddling to show up in pictures.


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## Raymond S. (Jan 11, 2013)

So now I can start learning to tell them apart...thanks. But I'm going to need a bit more tutoring I'm afraid because the "berried" word
I'm familiar/w but saddled is being used differently than I'm accustomed to here..."Saddled and berried shrimp are obviously female".
I've only used it to describe the shape of the shell across the back of the shrimp. So what meaning are you placing on it that I need
to learn ?

A thought that goes/w this is that I've tried to see if any difference exist in that aria along the bottom of their shell. I don't know if
it has an official name but I call it the skirt. All of my completely adult shrimp are fully red. A couple have lighter stripes down the
back but point being that I have no semi-clear ones which are adult so it may be hampering my seeing details of those semi-clear
shrimp. The question is, is that skirt only on the adults and does it signify sex ? I can only see it well on the adults so I'm not the
least bit sure it's not on the juvies as they are all semi-clear which hurts my ability to see it.
At the end of the first year this tank was up and with the RCS, it had an environmental disaster. I removed some of the bio-material
from the filter not knowing how much it meant to the overall performance of it and when I returned from work the next day after I
removed the media(about 1/4th of it) there were dead shrimp all over the floor and in the tank. The tank was fixed as best as I
could, removed most but not all shrimp as the tank had much in the way of hidden places/lots of grasses. Changed 80% water twice
in 2 days. But there has never been breeding to any amount since then in there...just enough to replace, not expand the colony.
Bought 2 new ones the last time(when I collected my Rotala Magenda which I had ordered) I went to the LFS to see if it would jump
start them...we'll see.


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## jccaclimber2 (May 6, 2012)

When I say "saddle" I'm referring to non fertilized eggs in the middle of the back. "Berried" is eggs in the lower rear of the shrimp. Note that a shrimp will not be berried until it is fertilized, so if you have berried shrimp you will end up with babies at one point or another.

Assuming a filter isn't sucking up the babies I've seen populations shrink when 1) Not fed enough (in to the tank) and 2) Not fed enough because the person feeds only flakes; the fish get all the flakes so the shrimp don't get any. Pellets seem to work better with shrimp for this reason if other fish are present.


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## jccaclimber2 (May 6, 2012)

Also, I thought that my shrimp population wasn't growing until the day I pulled 50 out and didn't notice a decrease.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

If a shrimp is "saddled" there will be a darkened area that goes from side to the other, just before the tail part starts. This means that this female is ready for mating. Berried is just carrying eggs to me. Once the shrimp becomes berried and before you even see any eggs, the saddle mark will go away. I believe it is referred to saddled because the mark looks like a saddle on its back.


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## Raymond S. (Jan 11, 2013)

OK then I'll start looking for that. I must have that dislexia again cause I remember hearing about fish eggs getting a black
spot(?) in them along the way. And if they didn't they weren't fertile. Must have crossed them up. Thought the RCS eggs would
be one color until fertile but another after. So all the RCS that I've seen/w them were fertile eggs. So this means they aren't living 
until a larger size. There are Least Killifish in there. Thought they might not find all the babies because of thick vegitation.
I do find one now and then.


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