The Puffer Forum

Will red cherry shrimp and those green shrimp hybridize? I've read that they're fully compatible but have heard that many shrimp species will interbreed.

Any risk with these two?

R+G=Orange?

Lol. A gross orangey brown.

I imagine it's safe but thought I'd ask as I know nothing about shrimp and have heard many times that they'll cross easily. Plus the green ones are twice the price of the cherries.

I think I recall hearing that they will, and that the purists frown upon it, like mixing guppies with Endlers. Of course, if they're food, it's irrelevant, just don't sell them to shrimp hobbyists who might go on to sell them as purebreds and contaminate shrimp colonies everywhere

Do you have real ID on the greens - there are multiple greens.

Unfortunately I don't. I think they're the "dark" green shrimp but no pictures and no species name.

Then I would keep them separate. Inter-species hybrids are trash far more often than not.

Will do.

Pardon my late reply but this is a far more complicated issue than "red+green=??".

This comes down to how closely related these shrimp are. As a rule of thumb, one can assume that crustaceans can only interbreed with other crustaceans in their same genus. Meaning that if your red shrimp are Neocaridina heteropoda, which are the regular cherry shrimp, your green shrimp must be Neocaridina sp. to have any chance of interbreeding. (Notice that I said "as a rule of thumb" as taxonomy can be very misleading and have many exceptions). Now, even if the two species are of the same genus, you do not have a guaranteed chance that they will interbreed. There may still be many reproductive isolation mechanisms in play (eg differences in behavior, sex organs, gamete incompatibility, etc.) so you cannot be sure that they will interbreed.

Somebody brought up the possible color of the offspring if these two interbred. That too is more complicated than red and green mixing into a brownish color. Color is generally a multifactorial trait meaning that it is made up of several genes and affected by environmental factors. For the offspring to be a mix of red and green such as brown, (...in simple terms...) the color genes would have to have some sort of co-dominance in which both colors are a dominant genotype and the two are both expressed together in the phenotype which isn't very common. More likely, you'll have some red shrimp and some green shrimp as offspring depending on the genotypes of the shrimps' colors.

I know nothing about interbreeding shrimp. The comment was said in jest Sorry if I confused the issue.

No worries, I know it was a joke .
I just wanted to clear it up because a lot of people have this misconception that red and white crayfish/shrimp make a pink crayfish when it is really more complicated than this and beyond the scope of a forum discussion.

Do they look like this? http://www.planetinverts.com/Green%20Shrimp.html

If they have different genus names then they are campatible.

Cherries are Neocaridina, dark green shrimp are Caridinia.

If you have any experience .. I am sure you are more than welcome to write an article regarding selective breeding in a home aquarium situation. I just started selective breeding with my ramshorn snails

Shrimp would be a very interesting read

If they have different genus names then they are campatible.

Do you mean incompatible? Animals with different genus names are usually too different to produce fertile offspring and therefore not compatible.

Shhh. You're bringing up bad memories of my genetics classes. I was trying to forget all that and you're ruining it

I ended up not getting the shrimp because there was no way to identify them without buying them and taking them home first. I didn't want a bunch of green shrimp as I would probably never find them in my shrimp tank.