I saw these Glass shrimp recently in a couple of local aquariums and immediately noticed a distinct difference to my local Paratya. I found they were distributed by A.I. as "Glass Shrimp". 

 

I was able to obtain a small group of them from a local (Melbourne) breeder who had them going for a while already - his stock had been obtained via Subscape Aquarium and they presumably had bought them through A.I. too. 

 

There is no supra orbital spine, so I imagine they must be a Caridina species. Does anyone recognise them? They must be fairly common and someone must be supplying them semi-regularly, so I don't think that identification to species and geographic region is too big an ask. They are quite visually distinctive, to me. 

cheers, Kyrill

 

 

So was the local breeder breeding them? I haven't heard of many people breeding Paratya apart from accidentally a few here and there.

Theres no obvious supra-orbital spine, so definitely not Paratya. Without knowing where they originated, its hard to be certain of what they are. Likely Caridina, but from the pics its impossible to tell as I cant count spine numbers, look for exopods, ect.

Serkan, the breeder I got these from was breeding them but these are not Paratyas. I have had captive Paratya breed many times, it's raising good numbers of the tiny larvae that's the tricky part. I have berried females of the pictured shrimp now and they're quite large-egged, so I don't anticipate any problems. 

Fishmosy, your excellent article on Paratya got me thinking anew about a species I've been playing with for years. I have never seen forms with large eggs down here in Victoria and I've collected from nearly the entire state. The diversity must be great further north - I have to get back up the east coast on a netting trip again. I do know where to find a real red form, blacks and blueish ones in very low numbers with typical clear ones but they're very unstable and individuals tend to change when you're keeping them. Line breeding towards stable colour is a decent but probably unrealistic goal. 

From what I have read there is likely several species of Paratya lumped into what we call Paratya australiensis today. And it is true that diversity tends to increase as you head towards the tropics (this is true for most organisms). If you have a look at the blue form that I have a pic of in the article, the eggs are quite large and I expect that is because I caught that shrimp in a upland stream. Another slight possibility is that it is a Caridina as I didn't get to examine that shrimp too closely as I wanted to see if she would carry the eggs full term.

I wouldn't necessarily say that line breeding them for colour is a unrealistic goal. If you look at the wild type of the neocaridina shrimp (cherries), there is little colour, so even if the shrimp go clear, they'll be carrying the genes that will code for colour. All shrimp change colour with regards to mood/stress. For example, when shrimp are placed in a new aquarium, they often go very pale. The question is, are the genes for colour coded in a similar way to caridina or neocaridina shrimp, or are they specifically linked to stress or perhaps breeding. If so, it will be difficult to breed shrimp that will always have colour because we will need to breed out the genes that limit colour response to these factors, without breeding out the genes for coiding the colour itself. Difficult yes, impossible, I dont think so. It may just be a case of being able to raise enough offspring to be able to make a good selection from for the next generation.

We should remember all CRS apparently came from three red shrimp that appeared in a batch. There is no reason why we couldn't have something similar happen with Paratya.

I assume all Paratya from Canberra should be able to be bred in full freshwater easier as we are quite far from the coast. There were red ones in Lake Burley Griffin and Ginninderra Lake.

I assume all Paratya from Canberra should be able to be bred in full freshwater easier as we are quite far from the coast. There were red ones in Lake Burley Griffin and Ginninderra Lake.

I think that would be the case.

Sorry to leave this thread for nearly a month. Anyway, the berried females carried their eggs to maturity and I have or had baby shrimp in the tank. Haven't seen one for a while but I haven't had much time to look. They were similar size to baby CRS (which they share the tank with) so certainly direct-developing. It was impossible to get a photo. 

If I get a positive ID for this species I'll post it here. When I get around to collecting some coloured Paratya again I'll start a new thread in the right section and continue the discussion about line breeding for colour and what I see as the problems with that idea. I still plan to get to Canberra this year (or early 2015 perhaps) and will be keen to do some collecting up there - hope you have some spare time for me, Serkan. The idea of direct-developing red Paratya is to much to resist. 

I can confirm there are direct developing Paratya around. The blue female from my pic almost certainly produces direct developing young as I've collected more individuals from the same location, and they dropped small young.

There are babies from these shrimp in the tank. They seem to grow pretty much as fast as CRS and more females are carrying eggs again. 

This little one was grazing biofilm on the front glass. 

 

If you ever plan to sell some of these I'd be interested.