Shrimp Aquatics is a small-scale freshwater breeding setup in Vietnam. We ship tank-bred shrimp, aquarium fish, crabs, snails and aquatic plants to hobbyists in the US, UK, EU and Australia. Everything in our catalog is bred or propagated in our own tanks rather than collected from the wild.
Who runs Shrimp Aquatics
Shrimp Aquatics is run by its founder, Duc Nguyen, in Ho Chi Minh City. Duc keeps and breeds the shrimp, fish and invertebrates we sell and is the author of the care guides on this site. If you’d like to see how we think about water, feeding and tank mates before you order, Duc’s author page lists every guide in one place.
From a planted tank in 2021 to our first shipments in 2026
We started in 2021 with planted aquariums, the way most keepers do. Sulawesi shrimp changed the direction of the hobby for us. The Malili lake Caridina are warm, alkaline water specialists with very little tolerance for swings, and getting a colony to breed instead of slowly disappear took years of testing water, substrate, filtration and stocking decisions.
That work became the core of what we do. Over time we expanded from Sulawesi lines into other freshwater shrimp, planted display tanks, aquarium fish and semi-terrestrial paludariums for vampire crabs. We opened Shrimp Aquatics to hobbyists in 2026, after we had enough breeding stock to sell from surplus instead of stripping a colony to fill an order.
If you want to see where that started, the Sulawesi shrimp category is still the part of the catalog we know best.
How we raise the shrimp and invertebrates we sell
We build our water from RO rather than tap water, then remineralize it to the targets each group actually needs. That matters because the groups we keep do not share water. Sulawesi lake Caridina run warm and alkaline, Bee and Crystal Caridina run soft and acidic, and Neocaridina sit somewhere in between. Mixing those targets to simplify the setup is how colonies stall, so each group runs in its own system.
Stock is raised in breeding groups rather than bought in and resold, so what reaches a product page grew up in the water that page describes. It also means our numbers are limited by what our tanks produce. A line goes out of stock rather than being topped up from an unknown source.
Which animals we hold back instead of shipping
Selection happens before packing, not after a complaint. We go through the order tank and pull anything we would not want to receive ourselves.
- Shrimp that look weak, sluggish or unable to grip a surface.
- Any animal with visible damage, missing limbs or a deformity.
- Anything showing signs of illness, along with the rest of that tank until we understand what we are looking at.
- Shrimp that are mid-molt or have just molted and are still soft.
Shipping is still a hard trip for an invertebrate, no matter how good the animal looked on packing day. That is the reason the live arrival guarantee exists, and the reason we would rather delay an order by a few days than send something borderline.
How we pack an order and how long it travels
- Conditioning. The order moves into a separate holding tank and we stop feeding for at least 24 hours, so less waste goes into the bag water during transit.
- Bagging. Livestock is double bagged with oxygen, so a single seam or puncture does not end the shipment.
- Insulation. Bags go into an insulated box with a heat pack or a cool pack chosen for the weather at your address in the week we ship, not for the season in general.
- Paperwork. We prepare the shipping documentation on our side, so you are not arranging export forms yourself.
- Transit. Deliveries to the US, UK, EU and Australia normally take 2-3 days from dispatch.
Customs handling can add time that no seller controls, and import rules differ by country and by species. Check what your destination allows before you order, and email us first if you are not sure. We would rather answer that question than ship into a hold.
What our live arrival guarantee covers if something dies
Film the unboxing before you open the bags. If livestock arrives dead, send us the unbroken unboxing video within 2 hours of delivery and we will send replacement animals in a following shipment.
Filming before you open the bags is what makes a claim straightforward, because it shows the shipment as it arrived rather than after handling. The window is short for the same reason, because the state of a shipment is easiest to judge in the first minutes after it lands rather than at the end of the day. Open the box as soon as it arrives, and email us before you start acclimating anything that looks wrong.
Ask before you order, not after your shrimp arrive
Most livestock losses we hear about trace back to a mismatch that was visible before checkout. A tank that has been running for two weeks is not a mature tank. A room that swings several degrees overnight is a problem for Sulawesi shrimp. Water that suits Neocaridina will not hold a Bee Caridina colony.
Email us at contact@shrimpaquatics.com with your pH, GH, KH, TDS, temperature, tank size, how long the tank has been cycled and what already lives in it. We will tell you which species fits, which does not and what to change first. If nothing in the catalog suits your setup right now, we will say so. Our care guides cover the same ground in more detail, and they are worth reading before you order.