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.
Lake Poso in central Sulawesi holds eleven shrimp species of the genus Caridina that live nowhere else. Nine live in the lake itself. Two live only in the streams that feed it, and five of the nine were described as…
Eleven described Caridina species have been recorded from Lake Towuti, the largest lake in the Malili system of South Sulawesi. Only a few of them ever reach a home tank. Below is the list, matched to the names you’ll actually…
Crystal shrimp and Sulawesi shrimp are both Caridina. That’s where the resemblance stops. Crystal shrimp are kept cool, soft and acidic at 60-72°F (15.5-22°C) and pH 5.8-6.8. Sulawesi shrimp are kept warm and alkaline at 79-86°F (26-30°C) and pH 7.5-8.5.…
Sulawesi shrimp come from a handful of ancient lakes on one Indonesian island, and the part of those lakes they actually occupy is small: a sunlit band of rock, sand and sunken wood close to shore. The water there is…
Two names, three animals, and one of them isn’t even freshwater. Cardinal shrimp and Sulawesi harlequin shrimp are both Caridina from the ancient lakes of Sulawesi, and they want the same warm, alkaline water. The harlequin shrimp a reef store…
Sulawesi shrimp don’t come from a river or a pond. They come from two ancient lake systems on one Indonesian island, Lake Poso and the Malili chain.[[1]] Those lakes have been cut off from everything else for over a million…
If you’re trying to work out which shrimp actually come from Lake Matano, the honest answer is short. They’re all Caridina, only a handful of species have published records from the lake, and just one of them is likely to…
Sulawesi shrimp come from two ancient lake systems on one Indonesian island, Lake Poso and the Malili lakes. The water there is warm and carries very little dissolved mineral, yet it still sits on the alkaline side of neutral. The…
Yes, you can build a community tank around Sulawesi shrimp. The guest list is short, though, and the water decides it, not temperament. Anything you add has to live permanently at 79-86°F (26-30°C) and pH 7.5-8.5, it has to leave…
If a Sulawesi tank looked fine at lights out and holds dead shrimp in the morning, the cause is almost always something that changed in the previous 24 hours, in the water or in the room. The readings that would…
A Sulawesi shrimp sitting on the bottom is only fine if something on it is still moving. Grazing shrimp work their mouthparts constantly, sweep their antennae and fan their swimmerets, even when they haven’t crossed the rock in ten minutes.…
Rabbit snails are the only tank mate that fits a Sulawesi shrimp tank without asking the shrimp to give something up. A short list of nerites, two or three endemic fish and a handful of Neocaridina can work in a…
