Red Snowflake Fishbone

A red shrimp under thick white markings, with snow-like speckling across its belly and a clean fishbone ladder down its back.

Arrives young, with the pattern roughed in and the colour still coming. Both sharpen as they mature, and some deepen to a darker, richer red than the usual bright red.

Four price levels, set by how dense that snow speckling is — already visible when they arrive. The dearer ones simply have more of it.

Caridina — wants soft, slightly acidic water and a tank that has been running a while. Not a first shrimp. Numbers in the FAQ.

The Red Snowflake Fishbone is one of the high points of classic Caridina breeding — deep red tissue under thick porcelain, carrying the heavy, snow-like belly spotting the line is named for and the fishbone dorsal it grew out of. It evolved directly out of the Red Galaxy Fishbone, and our colony is infused with Dark Red bloodlines: as a select percentage mature, they bypass standard bright red for a deeper, richer dark red beneath the porcelain.

About the photo. The shrimp pictured is High or Collector grade. We ship unsexed juveniles, so treat the main photo as the target, not the arrival. The belly skirt, the fishbone dorsal and the tissue colour all sharpen with maturity — juveniles land with the pattern roughed in and the colour still coming. Adults are available on request.

Four traits define a true Snowflake Fishbone, and they sharpen as the shrimp matures.

• Belly spotting: The hallmark that separates a true Red Snowflake Fishbone from a Red Galaxy Fishbone — distinct, heavy, snow-like spotting across the lower abdomen, held separate from the dorsal pattern.
• Fishbone dorsal: A clean ladder pattern running down the back — finer and more decorative than the thick stripe on a Boa.
• Porcelain thickness: Dense, opaque white coverage, razor-sharp against the red. A thick shell looks shiny and solid; a thin one dull, with see-through patches.
• Spider legs: The body pattern carried onto the legs — red patches with white. Leg colour follows shell thickness, so the higher grades show it first.

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

We grade by the traits that genuinely vary within a batch. A Snowflake Fishbone is graded first on its spotting — the snow-like coverage on the belly “skirt” and the head — and that density is readable at the size we ship, so this line sorts into four grades.

• Belly spots and skirting — the main separator between grades: how heavy and how complete the snow across the lower body is. Even an Entry shrimp carries some; it is the requirement for the grade.
• Head spots — a looser guide than on a Boa: Entry around 30–50% of the head, Mid and High 50–70%, Collector 70% and above.
• Fishbone and porcelain — a cleaner ladder down the back and a thicker, shinier white with the higher grades.

Entry carries the lightest spotting in the pull — a sparse belly skirt and a faint, broken fishbone — the same genetics at the lowest price, for growing out. Mid carries a medium spotting density: a visible but broken fishbone and a belly skirt with gaps, standard red tissue, the genetic foundation. High carries much heavier spotting across both the belly and the head, with a strong fishbone dorsal and thicker porcelain, and it is the grade where hints of the Dark Red genetics begin to show. Collector is the top of the pull — the heaviest, most complete spotting with the cleanest dorsal, in limited numbers.

Grading is done by eye at shipping size, on what the shrimp shows then. Shrimp rarely move a grade as they grow, but water matters: poor water costs colour and shell.