Tank Conditions
Finally bought 6 Crystal Red shrimps (Caridina sp.’Crystal Red’) or CRS on 20th August 2006. I keep them in a 20L tank (see here) with black fine sand as substrate, no CO2 supply but add some Seachem Excel every other day to keep plants happy. Water parameters are pH 7.8, KH 6 GH 16 and temperature about 23C. It has been suggested that CRS should be kept in slightly acidic and soft water but my condition is the opposite but they seem to be happy. So happy that two females actually laid eggs after two weeks! I also added some Indian Almond (Ketapang) leaves to provide a blackwater condition and stimulate breeding and soften the water. I am not sure if this is the direct effect or mere coincident that the CRS laid eggs in the present of the leaves. Nevertheless, so far they have been happy I think. The CRS seemed to like grazing on the Ketapang leaves especially when the leaves have been soften for one or two weeks in the water. I have taken some movies of them grazing on the leaves below.
Food
I feed them two types of food currently, one is Hikari Crab Cuisine and the other is Shirakura CRS food (I am also using the Doubtful powder and Source of Microorganism but have not noticed any change in shrimp colouration yet). At the begining they don’t like the Shirakura pellets as they were used to the Hikari Crab but after a period of feeding only Shirakura, they started to like it. From my observation, they seem to prefer the Hikari Crab anytime. Not sure if this is because Hikari is more tasty to them? I feed them small amount once a day and from time to time I starve them for two days (up to one week) to make them to eat algae in the tank!
Breeding
Two CRS laid eggs (brown colour, see photos below) and carried them for about one month. Yesterday (16th Oct 2006) I noticed that one of the two pregnant CRS had released her eggs. I looked around the tank but could not find any baby shrimps but today, I found one very tiny (1.5mm) baby CRS!!! From my experience with breeding Tiger shrimps, soon after eggs hatched,the babies don’t move much and tend to hide away from light so it is difficult to find them for the first few days. The babies should be more active after one week or so and start to emerge from hiding and look for food. | 
