I am the founder of Shrimp Aquatics and a freshwater aquarist with 4 years of hands-on experience keeping and breeding ornamental shrimp, fish, and invertebrates. Based in Ho Chi Minh City, one of the world's leading hubs for aquatic livestock, I test every care guide in my own fish room before publishing.
Care-guide methodology: husbandry advice is checked against observations from our own tanks where applicable, while species and water-parameter claims are reviewed against cited sources. Read our Content Policy.
Sulawesi shrimp need alkaline water because it’s the water they evolved in, and because nothing in a closed aquarium replaces it. The lake-system Caridina sold under this name come from two ancient lake systems on one Indonesian island, Lake Poso…
Sulawesi shrimp need warm water because the water they evolved in is warm and stays that way. The lake Caridina sold under this name are endemic to the ancient lakes of central Sulawesi. The cardinal shrimp Caridina dennerli is restricted…
Sulawesi shrimp are lake specialists, and most of what works in a cherry shrimp or crystal shrimp tank has to change for them. They need water held warm and alkaline at 79-86°F (26-30°C) and pH 7.5-8.5, an inert tank with…
At Shrimp Aquatics, our Sulawesi shrimp live about one to two years, and most keepers plan on about two. There’s no published lifespan for Caridina dennerli, for White Sock, Blue Ghost, Oiran or any other lake species in the group,…
Sulawesi shrimp are dwarf shrimp, and the honest answer is that nobody has published a measured adult maximum for them. The 2009 revision that describes most of the group measures carapace length, the shield over the head and thorax, rather…
Sulawesi shrimp come from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, and from two ancient lake systems inside it that have never shared water. One is the Malili system, five connected lakes drained westward by the Larona River into Bone Bay. The…
No Sulawesi shrimp is a beginner shrimp. If you want one anyway, start with tank-bred Cardinal shrimp (Caridina dennerli), the lake species with published rearing data behind it and an established place in the aquarium trade. The species you pick…
If you’re looking at a pale line where the carapace meets the first abdominal segment on a Sulawesi shrimp, the answer depends on two things. How wide is that line, and what is the shrimp doing? A faint, narrow line…
If Sulawesi shrimp are still dying one at a time after you’ve corrected everything the water will let you correct, a full reset is worth considering because the suspects that are left don’t live in the water column. They live…
Yes, and it’s one of the few things in a Sulawesi tank worth treating as an emergency rather than a setback. Shrimp grow only by casting the old exoskeleton and building a new one [[1]], so a molt that stalls…
Read what the female left behind first: it tells you more than any single cause you could guess at. Eggs sitting inside a cast shell, loose eggs on the substrate while she is bare, and a clutch that thins out…
No. Sulawesi shrimp and Bee or Crystal Caridina are kept in two ranges that never meet. So a shared tank means one of the two groups is living outside its own range every day it’s in there. The genus name…
