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Was taking some close up shots of my OEBT. Here are some of the better ones.

Moss is present in their natural habitat so definitely doable. Not sure about plants as I've never tried it. The question might actually be, can plants handle the same conditions as the zebras require? I would guess that not many plants could live with next to no nutrients in the water column unless they had access to plenty of nutrients in the substrate. I don't know if it is possible to have lots of nutrient in the substrate without it leaching into the water column. Given the susceptibility of zebras to high TDS, I wouldn't risk it. With regards to crossing with crystals - to my knowledge that hasn't been tried and I would suggest it would be very problematic (but not impossible) for three reasons: 1. I don't know of any crystals being kept at the same conditions as the zebs. My understanding is that crystals have trouble moulting if KH/GH are too low and zebras require super low TDS, GH and KH. This may change in the future as we figure out their requirements for successful keeping in aquariums and longer term breeding, but for the moment the requirements for both shrimp are miles apart. 2. Diseases carried by crystals are likely to adversely affect the zebras because zebras live in low TDS which has a low bacterial count and appear to be susceptible to bacterial infections when kept at TDS above their natural habitat (from my own experience), which you might have to do to keep both the crystals and zebras together. Once again, this might be overcome with time as we breed zebra strains that are better suited to life in aquaria. 3. This is an educated guess - it might be difficult to get zebras and exotics to mate/cross because, given the geographical distances between them, its likely that they separated into separate species a long time ago. In general, the more time that species have to evolve into separate species, the harder it is for them to cross. For example, its virtually impossible for a dog to produce offspring with a cat, despite the fact they are both mammals and evolved from a common ancestor some hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years ago, whereas dogs can mate and produce offspring with wolves. Dogs became a separate species from wolves when they were domesticated some 10s of thousands of years ago. Supporting my theory is the fact that crosses between Caridina shrimp have (so far) only occurred between species that have nearby geographical locations and therefore should be most closely related in the evolutionary sense. Prime example is the tiger and crystal crosses. these two species have been found in the same river systems. On the flip side, the genus Caridina might have only evolved fairly recently, meaning that pretty much any Caridina shrimp might be able to cross with any other Caridina shrimp and the only reason that we haven't seen these is because nobody has tried it yet. Given the amount of successful crosses that have been done (I believe there are at least 5 successful combinations of crosses between different Caridina shrimp species, plus 1 or 2 successful crosses with Neocaridina species), this may be true, but I don't think so because once again successful crosses have only occurred with shrimp from similar geographical locations. The other thing to consider about zebras specifically is that they can occur in the same river system as a very similar looking shrimp called Caridina confusa. If these species do not crossbreed (they might, but to my knowledge they don't), then there might be a mechanism that has evolved to stop them crossbreeding. One possible mechanism is the shape and appendages (hooks and spines ect.) on the males 'penis' which physically prevents the male from mating with a female of a different species. IF zebras have evolved to avoid mating with C. confusa then they are possibly less likely to be able to physically mate with crystals too. We wont know with 100% certainty that crystals and zebras cannot mate successfully until someone keeps them together, but that wont happen until we overcome some of the issues presented by keeping them together - 2 of which I have outlined above.

So, after my spectacular fail to reduce my shrimp numbers at the last live auction (I sold 11 shrimp, bought 10 from @ineke , who very kindly sent 13: resulting in a +2 from my previous shrimp total PLUS a 2nd tank I'd had set up for breeding now stocked with the new shrimp), I thought I'd start a post to track my breeding efforts/mishaps of the new inhabitants in my little nano tank. So far, they've seemed pretty happy in their new home, no losses, plenty of sheds and at least two berried females. Then looking in earlier, I saw 2 tiny juvies as well, so everything is tickety-boo. I also realised why I've not been able to see the babies, they're a pretty similar colour to the substrate. Here is a (poorly shot) photo to demonstrate - adult at the bottom, baby is the blur on the glass in the middle near the top: So now I'm following on with my plan of breeding them with some of my blue bolts from my main Taitibee/Taibee colony. I'm just drip acclimatizing them now to be released later tonight. Will I succeed in my plans to breed blue Taitibees? With the blue bolts survive long enough in the new colony to add to the gene pool? Do I have any idea what I'm doing or is this just a random experiment with no real understanding of shrimp genetics? WHO CAN SAY? (Probably me in a few months - I'll keep you all updated)

they're beauties [emoji7]

Awesome, glad to see you got your first shrimp in the tank :) They look similar to the Tibees I bought from @ineke at the last auction, mine have just started breeding (had them for ~1 month) so we can compare notes. Don't think I'll be getting any photos quite as good as yours though ;)

hi demon, how big is your tank and how well planted is it? are you able to post some pix? regarding coldwater fish that can accompany cherry shrimps without a big risk of the colony being decimated i don't know of many! pretty much anything that fits a shrimp in its mouth will have a try for them. there are some exceptions though. i know from my personal experience i had some neon tetras, leopard danios, corys, bristlenose but most surprisingly i had buttloasd of guppies as well as 5 or 6 cochus blue tetras and they seemed to barely impact the rcs at all infact i never saw them hunt them down. the key thing is that my tank was a 250 litre tank and was heavily planted, even after a trim you still could hardly see any of the fish let alone shrimp! when i tore down the tank i found there were literally thousands of rcs and i was only expecting to find a few hundred at most! i know of 2 suckerfish that do well in cold water the siamese algae eater and chinese algae eater and im sure both would gobble any babies and go for any freshly moulted shrimp at the very least.again i think the tankmate options depend on how heavily planted your tank is and how big it is as well as whether or not your colony may be large enough to sustain some predation and still grow. btw how cold is cold? if its above 18 then i think you can keep corys from memory but they will probably be most happy and breed well if it is 20+. Melbourne water is quite decent and you may be able to keep crystal shrimp with your cherries but the cherries will more than likely proliferate much more than the crystal shrimp! do you know your pH, TDS or GH/KH? this would help to decide if you could keep bee shrimp (or some tiger shrimp) with your RCS living happily. there may be some (very cool and different) native options available as well but you'd be better off asking @Grubs@fishmosy@kizshrimp@NoGi or others with native experience who know about their water parameters and compatibility with neos :-) You certainly could keep other coloured cherries with your RCS but if you do then when they interbreed there will a majority of drab looking offspring (you may be lucky and get some interesting combinations or a high percentage of nicely coloured ones but from what i've heard this is uncommon and it depends how far apart the colour gene for said cherry shrimp is) hope i've been helpful! i'm sure some experienced shrimpers could add a lot more and maybe correct some of what i've said :-) love n peace will -edit- forgot to mention i'm sure there are some groovy snails that would be suitable too :-)

I successfully breeding crs in my 13 lil iq5 . This tank is been going since july.

Just a reminder to follow the entry details folks. This comp is just as much about learning to use the Gallery feature here on SKF as it is about capturing that great shot. Entries so far are great, keep them coming. I might get a photo in myself.

@NoGi Yes mine are breeding. Although it varies from species to species, white gloves seem to be the easiest. For breeding, I havent kept track of any dates or anything like that, so I only know from other people that the female is berried for 3-4 weeks. Edit (almost forgot the food :P). You can feed them any low protein shrimp foods. I feed barley straw and snow as well as mosura occasionally. Mainly they eat algae. @jayc I'm not all that experienced with them, and often asking other people to help me so I'm probably not the best person. In saying that, in a few weeks time I may do a write up on how my tank is set up. There are so many ways to set up sula tanks, each one I see is different I think hahaha.

Definitely looks better with the lower water level!

sadly i dont think so either