Pink Steel

A pink shrimp with a thick, solid shell — no see-through patches anywhere on it.

Arrives young. Some settle to a soft metallic pink and others to a deeper light red, and the shade keeps moving for the first few moults.

One price, no grades. Sorting them by colour on arrival day would really just be sorting them by age.

Caridina — needs soft, slightly acidic water, so a step up from a first shrimp. Numbers in the FAQ.

Pink Steel is a rare pink-toned mutation isolated from within our Taitibee/Pinto steel lines. Where standard Steels run white, black or blue, this colony reliably throws a stable spectrum from soft metallic pink through to a deeper light red — with the dense, opaque “steel” shell the trait is named for.

About the photo. We ship unsexed juveniles — shell density and final colour saturation are still building at that age. Treat the photo as the target for how their steel armour matures, not the arrival-day look.

“Steel” describes the shell, not just the colour.

• Solid, not gradient: Unlike a Bolt pattern — strong colour at the head fading to translucent white at the tail — Steel shrimp carry an opaque, ultra-thick shell with colour running solid from head to tail and zero transparency.
• Shade shifts with growth: Individual juveniles will lean more pink or more red as they grow, moult, and settle into your water — that’s the natural range of the line, not a defect.

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.

Because the pink-to-red shade is still moving as each shrimp grows and moults, sorting on arrival-day colour would just be sorting by age, not quality — the same juvenile can shift its final shade after a few more moults in your tank.

So Pink Steels are one grade, one price — the full pink-to-red spectrum.