Selecting shrimp out: suitable housing and honest labels

A healthy shrimp outside your colour target still needs appropriate care. Selecting it out may mean removing it from the breeding group and providing suitable housing elsewhere. It is not an instruction to kill animals because of colour.

Arrange the destination before selecting

• Reserve a suitable, functioning aquarium for animals outside the selected group. A temporary jar is not long-term housing.
• Reassess water, space, food and tankmates in a mixed tank. Do not automatically combine species because all are outside the colour target.
• When rehoming, describe species, known origin, mixed ancestry and variation honestly. Do not use a more expensive line name because one animal resembles it.
• Do not quietly return animals to the selected group. Record every move so parental information remains useful.

Illness is a separate question

A pale animal may fail an appearance criterion, but colour alone does not establish a diagnosis. For injury, abnormal behaviour or unexplained deterioration, assess care and health separately. Do not transfer animals with unresolved symptoms as though they merely have a lower colour grade. Persistent suffering needs appropriate expert help; a colour-selection article is not a treatment or euthanasia protocol.

Never release aquarium animals into nature or flush them away. If expected offspring cannot be housed or rehomed appropriately, reduce the breeding project before more animals arrive. The breeding log helps track numbers and destinations.

Sources and scope

• LICG: Zoetwatergarnaal
• UF/IFAS: Cherry shrimp, Neocaridina davidi

LICG supports appropriate care; UF/IFAS describes N. davidi and introductions outside its native range. Nonlethal colour selection and the transfer arrangements below are editorial principles.