Pure Red Line

A red-and-white shrimp bred to breed true — their babies come out red and white too, with no surprise all-white ones.

Arrives young. Some carry a faint warm tint at this age that clears as they grow, and the leg colour fills in last.

Two lineages, two prices. Pattern Focused is picked for the pattern — the whitest layouts, Mosura and Flowerhead — with the white itself a touch softer. White Focused is picked for the white — thick, bright and solid — and comes in any pattern from SS up. The pattern is a look; the white is the quality.

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

Pure Red Line (PRL) is our stable, no-golden-genes red-and-white line that breeds 100% true and never throws snow-white offspring. “Pure” means the line has never been crossed with anything else, so every baby is a red-and-white Crystal.

About the photo. The shrimp pictured is from the White Focused lineage. We ship unsexed juveniles. Some show a slight warm or yellowish tint at this age — completely normal — with leg colour filling in as they mature; occasionally a juvenile already shows good leg colour out of the bag. Adults are available on request.

Pattern and white quality are two different ladders on a Crystal.

• Pattern is a look: S runs more red (V-band, Tiger Tooth), SS is roughly even (Hinomaru), SSS and SSS+ (also written SSSS) are mostly white (Mosura, Flowerhead). It says how much white there is, not how good the white is.
• White quality is structural: Thick, bright, opaque white with no see-through patches, deep crimson and leg colour. This is what holds up in a tank and what a Crystal is really judged on.
• Keep the water clean: On a white-focused line poor water shows fast — the white can turn yellowish. Stable, clean water keeps it bright.

Every shrimp arrives pale from the trip and colours back up within hours to a few days.

Pattern and white quality are two different ladders on a Crystal, and we keep a lineage for each.

Pattern Focused is bred for pattern: SSS and SSS+ shrimp, mostly Mosura with the occasional Flowerhead, with the white a touch softer. White Focused is bred for the white: a brighter, thicker, more solid shell, in any pattern from SS to SSS+ — the more standard Pure Red Line. Both breed true, and both are held to the same leg-colour and crimson-depth baseline.

Sorting is done by eye at shipping size, on what the shrimp shows then. Water matters on both: poor water yellows the white.