Look at the video with a group of orange sakura shrimps on christmass moss.

Look at some new pictures I have recently made:

Orange Sakura shrimps

Orange Sakura shrimp

Neocaridina davidi var orange shrimp

Orange neocaridina shrimps

Orange Sakura shrimps

Neocaridina orange shrimps

You will be surprised, but I have about 1/2″ of black inert sand at the bottom and I don’t add any fertilization to this tank.

Look at the photos with this aquarium.

10g painted fire red shrimps tank is ready for trimming

10g painted fire red shrimps tank is ready for trimming

Pearl grass plants in 10g painted fire red shrimps tank

Look at pearl grass (Hemianthus micranthemoides) plant that I’m growing there

Close up on Hemianthus micranthemoides aquarium plant

Pearl grass branch in a shrimp tank

Hemianthus micranthemoides

And one more photos with a little riccia island floating on the top.

Floating riccia in painted fire red shrimps tank

I’m planning to trim pearls grass in this tank. It will make a big difference. Stay tuned

White worms on a shrimp head

Worm parasites on a neocaridina shrimp head

These parasites are flat worms. Their are scientific name is ‘Scutariella japonica‘. They are similar to planaria, however, behave differently. Scutariella japonica seems to be seen mostly on neocadina shrimps.
They have a suction on one end and use it to keep themselves attached to a shrimps shell. It’s good they are not going in to shrimp body though. The other end of a worm has some tentacles. The worm is moving its body and its tentacles from time to time.
It looks like Scutariella japonica worms should not kill their host shrimps. Most of the parasites need their hosts creature be alive. However, lots of parasites can weaken the host creature and speed up their death. I haven’t seen these white worms sitting on shrimp gills (it’s on a side of a head), but it they do, they can harm shrimps quite fast.
These flat worms can move over the shrimp body or even from one shrimp to another using their suction and tentacles. They also lay eggs on a shrimps shell and spread their presents in the tank this way.

Scutariella japonica worms on a neocaridina davidi var. ‘blue dream’ shrimp

Scutariella japonica worms on a shrimp head

Treatment

Now we have come to the main question. How to get rid of these worms and do not kill the shrimps.

In my experience it was pretty easy. This time and two years ago I have used a salt bath.
I have prepared a salty water solution using 1 table spoon of an aquarium salt for 1 US cup of water. After the salt was completely dissolved I have put an infected shrimps into the solution for 20-30 seconds. Once I got the shrimps back from the solution, no parasite were spotted. It looks they are salt water made them relax their suction and they were falling down from the shrimp. I have checked the container with the salt water. I hope the parasites cannot survive in the salt water.

After doing some research on-line I have found successful stories about using Seachem Paraguard, Praziquantel and Sera Mycopur medications. I haven’t used them personally for these purpose.
I think it’s a good idea to make a big water change and use one of the mentioned medications to kill parasites and their eggs living in the tank.
I have a good experience with Praziquantel, which I was using to treat some other problem with my shrimp.

Look at the head of the same shrimps just after the salt bath.

Blue dream shrimps is cured from the parasites

These shrimps are easy to keep and, in fact, they are color morph or well-known cherry shrimp. I have seen two color strains of  orange shrimps. Some of them are more reddish and they are usually called pumpkin shrimps. Mine are different, they are closer to yellow. Females usually develop nice orange coloration with age. At the same time, males are quite orange and not yellow right from the beginning.

I keep these shrimps in tap water and do not use anything special for them.

Check out some photos below:

Orange sakura davidi shrimp. Head shot close up

Orange sakura neocaridina shrimp

Orange sakura neocaridina shrimp. One more head close up

Orange sakura freshwater shrimp. Tail close-up

Orange sakura freshwater shrimp on a folder sponge

Young orange sakura neocaridina shrimp

I keep these guys in a small 10-gallon tank. Nevertheless, their colony is doing well and I’m currently selling these orange shrimps.

Neocaridina davidi var. ‘blue velvet’ shrimps has a great advantage in comparison with the tiger shrimps, they and neocaridina which means they are easy to keep. This is opening so many door for this variety and set them free for a public.

I’m posting some new photos of my blue velvet shrimps here:

As you can see these shrimps have quite transparent body. I hope that one day we will have some kind of painted variety that will be as solid as painted fire red shrimps

Look at the close-up high-definition video with this red shrimp.

I’m posting one picture of this Bloody Mary shrimps below.

Neocaridina davidi var. 'bloody mary' male shrimp

And here you can see it together with a sibling. These both shrimps were born in the same tank. Do you see the difference?

Neocaridina chocolate and 'bloody mary' shrimps

Look at a better picture of a chocolate shrimp here. It’s a female

Chocolate davidi shrimp

I have made much more pictures of this red guy. I hope I will find time to post them soon.

Riccia mat takes almost all space in my 10g tank

That aquarium is old and no one is living there. This was a reason why algae started to grown; it was no shrimps to use it as a food
So, I moved this mat and put it into another tank where I keep lots of painted fire red shrimps. In 4 days the mat was perfectly clean and I decided to move it back. Here is a challenge came. It was lots of tiny shrimps that have chosen the riccia as their home. I did not want to lose my shrimplets and decided to wash the mat in a bucket of water. After that, I was going to catch shrimplets one by one and put them back in a tank. However, I was surprised by a quantity of little shrimps I found in a bucket once I remove the riccia mat. It was at least five dozens of little shrimps.
Anyway, catching tine shrimps is not a problem for me, since I have to do that every time I vacuum some of my tanks. As I said, it’s not a problem, but it’s still quite time-consuming exercise
After washing the mat at the first time, I replaced the water in a bucket and did that again. It was a next surprise, I still saw quite a lot of little shrimps in my water. It was hard to tell how they managed to hold in a riccia, but they were.
So, long story short, but I had to ‘wash’ my riccia four times and I think I caught about a hundred little shrimps that were initially hiding in the mat.

Look at some pictures of this riccia. The pictures are made from the top.

Riccia floating plant

Riccia has tine leaves

Bright green color makes riccia a perfect plant for aquascaping

Riccia fluitans is a floating plant, top leaves are often come out of the water

Riccia fluitans always needs a least a medium light

I was exploring my tank with blue velvet shrimps today and was greatly surprised with lots of baby shrimps in a tank. These blue neocaridina guys were handing in a tank for about a year for now and it was no good breeding results.

These is one of the adult blue velvet neocaridina shrimps that I have in the tank.

Adult blue velvet neocaridina shrimp

Recently, I rearranged their aquarium a little. I have removed majority of old plants and especially floating one. They were blocking water current from the filter and produce too much waste by dropping dead leaves. The tank was almost clean for a month and I have been adding Mosura BT-9 bacteria regularly. I think I was the main support for baby-shrimps to survive. I was adding just a little bit of my plants ‘macro fertilization’ and this promoted some algae growth.

These blue velvet shrimps have interesting babies. They are quite different from cherry or any other neocaridina shrimps. The thing is that Blue velvet babies have distinct brown color. I have made some photos in a clear container to show that.

Baby blue velvet shrimps

Baby blue velvet shrimps in a small clear container

Baby blue velvet shrimps, look at the stripes

In a tank those little stripes are invisible, but brown coloration is quite noticeable.

Baby blue velvet shrimps, there is one bigger shrimp

Baby blue velvet shrimps

Baby blue velvet shrimps, these guys are 1-2 weeks old

At the age of month blue color replaced these brown/reddish stripes. Ok, thank you for reading. I have some funny blue shrimps with red spots on a face, I will try to make photos of some soon.