Orange Eyes Blue Devil

A deep blue Caridina with glowing orange eyes instead of the usual black.

The orange eye is there from birth. The blue arrives lighter and thickens with every moult — the shed skin they grow out of every few weeks.

One price, no grades. Shell density varies across the batch, and every one of them darkens with age.

Caridina — one of the fussier ones. Needs purified (RO) water with minerals added back, and a buffering soil. Numbers in the Water panel below.

The Blue Devil is our name for an orange-eyed blue Caridina: a heavy, opaque blue shell from the Blue Steel and Blue Bolt family, carrying the orange-eye (OE) mutation. In an OE shrimp the eye lacks its dark pigment and shows orange instead. Against a dense blue shell the contrast is the whole point.

About the photo. The shrimp pictured is one of the best-looking adults from the batch. At juvenile size the blue is lighter; it packs in and darkens with each moult, as on any blue Caridina line. The eye colour is there from the start. Adults are available on request.

Two traits, on two different schedules:

• The orange eye: Fixed from birth. A recessive mutation, so it takes deliberate line-breeding to hold in a colony — and it does not change with age or water.
• The blue: Builds over time. Juveniles land lighter and more see-through; the pigment packs in with each moult, and the older the shrimp the deeper the blue. Poor water costs blue; stable water keeps it.

We grade by the traits that genuinely vary within a batch. Here shell density does vary — the deepest individuals show heavy, opaque blue from juvenile size, others start lighter — but all of them darken with every moult and every one carries the orange eye. Splitting that spread into tiers would be grading age, not the shrimp.

So Blue Devils are one grade, one price.

Unlike a Neocaridina, this line needs reverse osmosis (RO) water — tap water run through a filter that strips everything out, so you control exactly what goes back in. Add a Caridina-specific GH+ mineral to reach GH 4–5 and TDS 100–120, and keep them on an active buffering soil that holds pH at 5.8–6.5. That combination gives the soft, slightly acidic, very stable water these shrimp need.