# RCS blue/purple color morph



## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

I was just interested if anyone has experienced morphs in their Red Cherry shrimp colonies.

I started a RCS tank over a year ago with three berried females. They were all a nice bright red but there were a couple of wild colored shrimp in the tank they were in so I planned to remove any offspring that didn't have good red coloration to keep the strain pure and of high quality. I never got round to it though, or should I say I didn't have another tank to use and I enjoyed watching them so much I didn't have the heart to use them as feeders so just left them be. 

Fast forward over a year and the tank they were in had become a holding tank for all my odds and ends of plants, overgrown with moss and stained brown from soaking driftwood. (Not pretty but the shrimp and my nerite colony thrived) Yesterday I decided to tear down the tank and move the +/-100 RCS to a tank I had set up a while ago that is much more display worthy. 

Now that I can see them better again I can see that a large portion are not pure red. What surprised me though is that it doesn't look like wild coloration, which is a kind of washed out green/brown. The markings on these guys are more blue and in some cases very dark, almost black or dark purple, but there is no green/brown hue to it. A couple of the larger females are quite striking with a red stripe down their back and dark sides. There are also some females that are a solid dark red, almost maroon.


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## Kehy (Apr 19, 2011)

pics!


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Only 100 something after a year? Thought you would have had more like 1000.

Might it be possible when you got them, although they were red, that they had been mixed with other shrimp and crossbred? You should post some pics.


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## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

Yeh, I'll take some pics when I get the chance, I'm kind of living between two houses at the moment so it's a bit awkward.



jrman83 said:


> Only 100 something after a year? Thought you would have had more like 1000.


There are a couple of loaches in there which don't bother the adults but do a bit of population control on the little ones.



> Might it be possible when you got them, although they were red, that they had been mixed with other shrimp and crossbred?


Yes, the same store had a tank of wilds and a couple of them were mixed in the tank with the reds, well I thought they were wilds at the time but thinking back on it they were more of a blue grey rather than the green, tan hues of pictures of wilds I have seen, so maybe they were another specifically bred 'blue' color. The color I am seeing on mine is not the same. They were a solid blueish grey, mine show a much darker color more like black or purple, It's not a solid color, (except for the dark red ones) it is mottled in with the red and clear parts of the body. The first couple generations of mine were red but I'm assuming what I have is resulting from RCS with some of those grey genes thrown in. Of course I do have a dark substrate which is maybe bringing out the darkness.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Any shrimp that is in the same family can interbreed. RCS, yellow, blue, tigers and a few others I believe can all interbreed.


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## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

Yeh, I just thought you got instant wilds, not something different. 

I thought tiger shrimp were Caridina cantonensis though, not Neocaridina Heteropoda, or is it just one of those common name things that's used for more than one species.


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## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

I've been doing a bit of web digging and it seems quite a few people get color variations in their RCS populations. I found this interesting,and the 1st pic is very like some of my large females:
Cherry or - APE - Aquatic Plant Enthusiasts | A Planted Aquarium Community

Promise I will add my own pics when I manage to get myself, my camera and my tank all in the same place at the same time.


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## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

From the pics I see it looks like the original females I had were high grade Red Cherries/Sakura /Fire/Super Reds/or whatever, as they were solid bright red. One of them had a pinkish stripe down her back which I think was permanent not just a molting thing. Most of the 1st generation offspring females were solid, bright red, though there were a few washed out looking ones. The blue/black coloration only showed up later, maybe a throw back to a cross with a blue/grey shrimp.

I found another interesting thread, these pics could be of my shrimp. I got a scare at first because someone said it was Black Spot disease but it's clear later on in the posts that it is genetic not disease. I think it's very likely the shrimp shown here are from the same genetic pool as mine or have resulted from a similar cross.

Red Cherry Shrimp with Blue Hue - Arofanatics Fish Talk Forums

I don't know if anyone is interested in this but I thought I would share what little information I have for anyone who is interested in shrimp genetics and color strains.


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