Black Fancy Tiger High Grade

Advanced — every serious source places this line with experienced keepers. There is one piece of good news: the tiger half makes it hardier than a pure Crystal Red, tolerating slightly higher pH and slightly harder water. But it is still a Caridina: it needs RO water remineralised with GH+, active soil run empty for 4–8 weeks before the first shrimp goes in, 24/7 aeration at Vietnamese room temperature, and a DEDICATED tank because it will cross with almost every ornamental Caridina line. We will say it plainly: this should not be your first shrimp tank. If you are starting out, keep Neocaridina for a season and come back — we would rather lose an order than have you lose a colony.

No, and this is the most common misunderstanding about the line. Tiger shrimp (Tiger, OEBT, Super Tiger, Blue Tiger) are the wild species Caridina mariae and its colour morphs. The Black Fancy Tiger is a HYBRID of tiger and bee — it does not exist in the wild and every individual was born in a tank. A few more that get confused: the Tangerine Tiger, despite the name, is Caridina cantonensis rather than part of the tiger branch, and it tolerates KH up to 8, which makes it a markedly easier shrimp; and anything sold as a 'Super Tiger' that shows opaque white in its stripes is a cross, because pure tigers carry no opaque white. Finally: every Fancy Tiger is a Tibee (a Tiger × Bee cross), but not every Tibee earns the name Fancy Tiger.

The honest answer: there is NO standard grading scale for Fancy Tigers. Surveying the major vendors in the US, Europe and Taiwan turns up at least three parallel systems — the letter scale A→S→SS→SSS, the numeric G3→G2→G1→G0, and the descriptive Standard→High→Premium — with no conversion between them, while retail prices for nominally the same shrimp span more than tenfold. The critical WARNING: on the Fancy Tiger letter scale, A is the LOWEST grade, the opposite of the bee ladder where A is a middle grade — people have bought the wrong shrimp over that one letter. All three scales measure the same four things: an opaque black base, crisp genuinely white bands, patterning over the whole body, and no translucent zones. We use the descriptive scale and sell from the actual photograph.

Dialled-in band: pH 6.2–6.8, TDS 120–160 ppm, GH 4–6, KH 0–2, 22–26°C, ammonia and nitrite at zero, nitrate under 10 ppm. The difference from high-grade bee shrimp is that the pH sits HIGHER (bees run 5.8–6.5). The reason is real rather than a copying error — field measurements at the type localities put the tiger C. mariae at pH 7.0 and 40 µS/cm against the bee C. logemanni at pH 6.0 and 33 µS/cm. A Fancy Tiger carries both, so it tolerates a slightly wider window than a pure bee. Still mandatory: RO water remineralised with a GH+ product only (never GH/KH+), an active buffering soil, and stability over perfect numbers.

Not required to keep them ALIVE; effectively required if you want opaque banding and steady breeding. We are more cautious here than on the bee page: a 25°C ceiling is stated explicitly for Fancy Tigers and recurs across European Caridina specialists. On the other hand the tiger half makes the animal hardier than a pure Crystal Red. In practice: aim for 24–25°C; 25–27°C is workable at Vietnamese room temperature with 24/7 aeration and light stocking, but you are running at the edge; 28–30°C is the danger zone; above 30°C is a hard ceiling. What kills shrimp in warm water is OXYGEN, not heat — from 24 to 30°C dissolved oxygen falls about 10% while demand rises 50–100%. Fans buy 2–3°C, need a controller, and 0-TDS RO top-up.

Mandatory — the single biggest difference from a Neocaridina tank. Active soil is a cation-exchange clay: it releases H⁺ with humic acids, holds the tank mildly acidic and strips KH out of the water. In a Caridina tank THE SOIL IS THE BUFFER, not the KH — on an inert substrate pH drifts above 7 and breeding stops almost entirely. Fresh soil leaches 2–8 ppm ammonia, so the tank runs EMPTY for 4–8 weeks before any shrimp go in — that time is for the biofilm and microfauna shrimplets actually eat, not for the filter. A free way to check the soil is alive: measure TDS in your mixing bucket, then in the tank; working soil always pulls the in-tank number lower, and that gap is its remaining capacity. Gap closed and pH past 7 means it is spent — typically 12–18 months on RO.

No — and you should know this before buying breeding stock. A Fancy Tiger is a hybrid: the patterning recombines every generation, so a spawn comes out across the full range and every animal is banded differently. That is exactly why high-grade stock is expensive. One breeder published the retention rates from their own colony: only about 13% of offspring kept at first grade, 6% at second, 3% at third. Most of a spawn never reaches a shelf under this name. If you are breeding, have a second tank ready for the animals that do not make the cut, and never move them in with another line.

Keep them on their own, and here that advice is stricter than usual. A Fancy Tiger will hybridise — and it will — with essentially everything in the ornamental Caridina world: Crystal Red, Crystal Black, Taiwan Bee, tigers, OEBT, Super Tiger, Tangerine Tiger, Tibee, Taitibee, Pinto, Mischling. The hybrids are fertile, so the damage does not stop at one clutch: a few generations later you have a tank of nameless shrimp that cannot be sold and cannot be walked back. Neocaridina and Sulawesi shrimp cannot hybridise with it (different genera) but the three groups need three completely different waters, so they still cannot share a tank. Safe tankmates: Nerite snails and small peaceful fish such as Otocinclus.

A female carries about 15–30 eggs and incubates for roughly four to five weeks (around 30 days), hatching straight into fully formed shrimplets with no larval stage. Keep at least 8, ideally 20+, in a minimum of 20 litres on a sponge or airlift bio filter, with 10–30% weekly water changes. The critical breeding condition is pH rather than temperature: above the recommended band you get fewer spawns, smaller clutches and dropped eggs. One detail that alarms newcomers: for 24–48 hours after a moult the shrimp look pale before the colour returns — normal, not disease. And remember the offspring arrive across the whole pattern range rather than uniformly at high grade.

Six steps, and the most important one is last. Open the parcel immediately with the lights off; float the sealed bag 15–20 minutes to equalise temperature (safe limit 2–3°C); decant shrimp and bag water into a separate container; drip 2–3 hours at 1–2 drops per second, in two cycles to push the mix above 75% tank water (3–4 hours for Taiwan Bee, plus an airstone beyond two hours); NET the shrimp across and never pour bag water in; then leave them alone — no food for 24 hours, no water change for 7 days. Plainly: the death that causes the most disputes does not happen at unboxing. Rehousing triggers a moult, and if the receiving tank's GH is wrong that moult fails — the shrimp dies 24–72 hours later having looked fine on arrival. Which is why the tank must be ready BEFORE you order.

A properly kept colony replaces itself continuously, so you never really watch it age. The most common cause of death is not old age but a failed moult — the 'white ring of death', a white gap between carapace and abdomen, untreatable and only preventable. It almost always follows a large water change or a GH swing. So: change 10% weekly or 10–20% monthly, DRIP it in rather than pouring, and respect three limits — TDS no more than 10–25 ppm per day, GH no more than 2 points per day, temperature no more than 2–3°C per day. Top up evaporation with 0-TDS RO, never with remineralised water. And a discarded moult is very often mistaken for a dead shrimp.

We pack with pure oxygen and ship nationwide. Free nationwide air shipping on orders from 5,000,000₫, and free intra-city delivery on orders from 2,000,000₫. Live arrival is guaranteed — film one continuous unboxing video to claim a replacement. Bee shrimp travel less well than Neocaridina: the safe window is 18–24 hours in an air-filled bag and 36–48 hours on pure oxygen, so we book around flight times rather than sending blind. We stop feeding 24–48 hours before packing — the single most effective way to limit ammonia in the bag.