Blood Orange

A deep orange shrimp — closer to red-orange than tangerine.

Arrives young and lighter. The colour packs in and darkens as they grow.

One price, no grades. The depth comes with age, so sorting juveniles would be guesswork.

Neocaridina — the easier of our two shrimp families, hardy and quick to breed, and a good first shrimp. Numbers in the FAQ.

The orange Neocaridina is usually sold as Orange Sakura or Pumpkin — a bright, slightly see-through tangerine, bred originally out of red and yellow cherry stock, and it breeds true. Our Blood Orange is that line pushed darker: a heavy pigment that covers the whole body and lands closer to red-orange. It keeps all the hardiness and quick breeding of a cherry shrimp.

About the photo. The shrimp pictured is one of the best-looking adults from the batch. Juveniles arrive a lighter, brighter orange; the depth packs in with each moult.

What to expect as they grow:

• Colour builds with age: Young Neocaridina are naturally more see-through. The orange thickens and darkens with each moult, until the body is a solid deep orange at full size.
• Shows best on dark ground: Against a dark soil and green plants the colour reads strongest — on pale sand it washes out.

We grade by the traits that genuinely vary within a batch — pattern density, colour saturation, how far colour wraps around the shell. Where those differences are visible in the tank from day one, we sort them and price each tier for what it actually is.

Blood Oranges are not sortable that way, because the depth of orange is tied to age: a lighter juvenile today is simply younger, not lesser.

So Blood Oranges are one grade, one price — robust unsexed juveniles from the same colony.