Blue Bolt
A blue shrimp with no wild original. Blue Bolt belongs to the Taiwan Bee family — what you see is dark body pigment showing through a thin white covering layer, which is why it is graded on the DEPTH and EVENNESS of the blue rather than on pattern. A clean colony breeds Blue Bolt; the only thing that varies between siblings is how deep the blue runs.
A Blue Bolt's blue is not a coat of paint — it is the dark base showing through the white.
See them in motion
A man-made line born in Taiwanese breeding tanks
Blue Bolt does not exist in the wild. No wild Caridina population matching a Blue Bolt has ever been documented anywhere — every Blue Bolt on earth was born in a glass tank. It belongs to the Taiwan Bee group, which appeared in Taiwanese breeding facilities around 2006–2007 out of very heavily selected Crystal bee stock. The taxonomy remains contested, so the correct and defensible way to write it is Caridina cf. cantonensis — 'cf.' meaning 'compare with', and anyone stating one settled species name for this line is overselling their certainty. Within the family, Blue Bolt holds the HEAVY-WHITE position — the same slot as Golden Bee / Snow White. On the Taiwan Bee family tree it comes out of the BLACK lines (Panda, King Kong): it is what that black side becomes when you select generation after generation for a thicker white covering, until all that remains visible is the dark base reading blue through the white. The red side (Wine Red, Red Ruby) is a different selection direction from the same genetics, not a step on the road to Blue Bolt.
Where the wild bee shrimp actually lives
Understanding the original stream is what explains the tank — and why the Vietnamese trade calls this animal 'tép lạnh', the cold shrimp.
How to read a Blue Bolt
Real-world water parameters
This is the dialled-in band for someone breeding for grade. The TOLERATED band is wider: pH 5.5–7.0, GH 3–7, KH 0–2, TDS 100–250 — but the higher the grade you are chasing, the more you want to sit inside the narrow band above. Taiwan Bee morphs (Blue Bolt, Wine Red, Shadow) should run lower still, at TDS 100–130 and GH 4–5. Ammonia and nitrite must be zero; keep nitrate under 10 ppm — half the ceiling you would accept for Neocaridina. Stability still beats perfection: a tank parked at GH 5 outperforms one chased between 4 and 7.
KH must sit at or near zero — and this is the part most people have backwards. Carbonate both raises pH and PINS it, so as long as there is KH in the water the soil cannot pull the tank down into the acid range. Worse: an active soil buffers by neutralising exactly that carbonate, so every degree of KH you add burns soil lifespan. In a Caridina tank THE SOIL IS THE BUFFER, NOT THE WATER. So mix RO water with a GH+ remineraliser only — never GH/KH+. The bonus: at around pH 6 almost all ammonia speciates to the far less toxic ammonium ion, NH₄⁺.
GH 4–6 is the calcium–magnesium window for moulting, and it is LOWER than Neocaridina (6–12) for osmoregulatory reasons, not because Bee shrimp are 'weak'. The wild animal lives in streams measured at just 33 µS/cm conductivity — barely above rainwater. Never chase a failed moult by pushing GH above 6: below GH 4 the shell cannot form, but above 6 it forms too thick and hard to shed. And if you must move GH, move it no more than 2 points per day.
Do Bee shrimp really need cold water?
Plainly: Bee shrimp do NOT need water six to eight degrees cooler than Neocaridina the way Western care sheets imply — the real gap is about two to three degrees. The '20–24°C' figure repeated everywhere does not come from any experiment; it is simply the room temperature of an unheated Japanese or German house, copied forward until it looked like a standard. No controlled temperature study exists for this species — so we will not write as though one does. The field evidence points the other way: Singapore keepers breed CRS on fans at 25–26°C and still get spawns at 28–29°C; a Taiwanese wholesale sheet lists crystals at 22–27°C against Neocaridina at 22–28°C — a one-degree gap; and research on the wild Hong Kong streams found the shrimp breed ONLY once the water passes 20°C. Warmth is a breeding trigger, not a brake.
- 20–24°C
- The Western textbook figure — only reachable with a chiller or a cold room
- 24–26°C
- The quality band: whitest opacity, steadiest breeding — the realistic target
- 26–28°C
- Genuinely workable at Vietnamese room temperature — with 24/7 aeration, light stocking, mature soil
- 28–30°C
- Danger zone: the colony stops breeding and attrition starts
- Above 30°C
- Hard ceiling. 32°C is acutely lethal
What kills shrimp in warm water is not HEAT, it is OXYGEN. Going from 24 to 30°C, the water's oxygen-carrying capacity falls only about 10% (8.42 → 7.56 mg/L) — but the shrimp's demand, as an ectotherm, rises 50–100%. Two curves moving in opposite directions, and where they cross is where a colony dies. So: 24/7 AERATION is the single highest-value purchase for a Vietnamese Caridina keeper without a chiller — more valuable than premium food. Shrimp do not reliably surface-gasp the way fish do, so low oxygen stays invisible right up until you are counting bodies.
A very Vietnamese trap that few care sheets mention: cooling with a fan evaporates water, and minerals do NOT evaporate with it. After a few days of fan cooling your GH and TDS climb on their own while you have touched nothing — and shrimp die of failed moults rather than of heat. Top up evaporation with PURE RO, never with remineralised water. And raise aeration in hot weather, because warm water holds less oxygen.
The honest answer: to keep them ALIVE, no chiller is needed. To breed for GRADE, one is effectively required. Cooling fans buy you about 2–3°C in Vietnamese conditions (the 4–5°C figure often advertised is optimistic — high humidity blunts evaporative cooling), they must run on a temperature controller, and top-up must be 0-TDS RO or your TDS climbs daily. We recommend a chiller for high-grade PRL/PBL, Taiwan Bee, Blue Bolt, Shadow and for dedicated breeding tanks — we do not sell one to a beginner who simply wants a tank of A-grade Crystal Reds in Hanoi or Saigon. And to be clear about one myth: a deep substrate does NOT cool a tank.
In a Bee tank, the soil is the buffer
Active buffering soil is mandatory, not optional. It is a cation-exchange clay: it releases H⁺ along with humic and fulvic acids, holds pH around 6.0–6.5 and strips KH out of the water. Never use an inert substrate — gravel or sand as you would for Neocaridina. Without buffering soil the pH drifts above 7 and breeding stops almost completely. Fresh soil leaches 2–8 ppm ammonia, so run the tank EMPTY for 4–8 weeks before adding shrimp; the extra time is not for the filter, it is for biofilm and microfauna to establish — which is what shrimplets actually eat. And do not deep-vacuum the soil: its exchange capacity is finite, and the mulm on top is food.
A free way to check whether your soil is still alive: measure the TDS of your MIXED water in the bucket, then measure the TDS IN the tank. A working soil always pulls the in-tank number below the mix. That gap is a live readout of the soil's remaining capacity. When the gap closes to zero and pH starts drifting past 6.8–7.0, the soil is finished — alongside GH creeping up on its own, unstable readings after every water change, deaths concentrated around moults, and granules that crumble to mud between your fingers. Realistic lifespan: about 12–18 months on RO, and possibly only 6 months on tap water (published figures range from 6 months to 3 years — the 12–18 month number is our own judgement).
The Blue Bolt line at a glance
- Line
- Blue Bolt — a member of the Taiwan Bee family
- Scientific name
- Caridina cf. cantonensis — taxonomy contested, no settled species name
- Origin
- Man-made; appeared in Taiwanese breeding tanks around 2006–2007. Does not occur in the wild
- Position in the family
- The heavy-white position — the same slot as Golden Bee / Snow White
- Comes out of
- The black Taiwan Bee lines (Panda, King Kong), selected for a heavy white covering
- Grading
- On depth, evenness and opacity of the blue — there is NO A/S/SS/SSS ladder
- Inheritance
- Taiwan Bee colour is RECESSIVE — two copies of the gene are needed before it shows
- Breeds true?
- YES — a clean colony throws Blue Bolt; only the depth varies
- Adult size
- 2.5–3cm
- Clutch size
- 20–40eggs
- Incubation
- 28–35 days, hatching directly into ~2 mm shrimplets
- Maturity
- Around 3–4 months
- Lifespan
- 1–2 years
- Temperature
- Above roughly 28°C they survive but essentially stop breeding
- Difficulty
- Intermediate to advanced — not a first shrimp tank
- Housing
- Dedicated tank: it crosses with tigers, Crystals and every other Taiwan Bee colour class
- Options
- Pet grade (for display, accessible price) · Breeding grade (selected from the parent colony)
Grading a Blue Bolt: two questions, and no alphabet
Before reading any Blue Bolt listing anywhere, know this: **there is no A / S / SS / SSS ladder for Blue Bolt.** That ladder belongs to Crystal bee shrimp and it measures WHITE COVERAGE — a meaningless quantity on an animal whose whole body is already a white covering layer over dark pigment. A seller attaching 'SSS' to a Blue Bolt is borrowing another scale's credibility. Blue Bolt is graded on two things only: how DEEP the blue is, and how EVENLY it grades.
Why is a Blue Bolt graded on DEPTH rather than pattern? Because the blue is not a blue pigment layer. Blue Bolt sits in the heavy-white position within the Taiwan Bee family — the same slot as Golden Bee / Snow White — and what you see is DARK BODY PIGMENT showing through a thin white covering layer. Wherever the white runs thin, the blue reads deep. That is also why a Blue Bolt never shows 'bands' the way a bee shrimp does: what it has is a gradient.
- Pale / cheek blue
- Body almost white with blue confined to the cheeks and head. This is the lowest level still sold as a Blue Bolt
- Mid blue
- Clear blue over most of the body but patchy, with washed-out zones or visible translucency
- Deep, cleanly graded blue
- Opaque, saturated blue with a smooth rather than broken transition into the white — this is the level the market pays for
- Extreme Blue Bolt
- Solid blue over the whole body with no white left — the ONLY name in the Blue Bolt group that every vendor uses the same way
A specific warning about the words 'Deep Blue Bolt': surveying the major vendors turns up at least three different meanings — a deeper-than-usual blue, a separate strain name, or simply a higher-priced import. It is NOT a defined grade step. When you buy, look at the actual photograph of the batch and ask the seller plainly what they mean by it.
To put it briefly, because this is where buyers get led astray: when you read a Blue Bolt listing, the only trustworthy thing on it is the ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPH of the batch, shot in ordinary light rather than under a blue lamp. The wording — 'SSS', 'Deep', 'Extreme grade AAA' — mostly carries no shared definition between vendors. If you are not sure what you are looking at, send us the photo, including somebody else's photo; we will tell you honestly where that animal sits.
Where Blue Bolt sits in the Taiwan Bee family
Why do two shrimp both sold as Blue Bolt differ several-fold in price? Five things decide it, in order of weight: (1) the DEPTH of the blue — the biggest factor and the one thing everybody agrees on; (2) the EVENNESS of the gradient, smooth beating blotchy; (3) OPACITY — if you can still see through it against a light, it is ordinary stock; (4) size and maturity, since juveniles always run paler and colour up with age; (5) and the factor invisible in any photograph: whether the parent colony is clean, i.e. whether it actually throws Blue Bolt.
Recessive genes, Mischlings, and why 'breeds true' is what you are paying for
This is the part that decides a Taiwan Bee purchase, and it works differently from Crystal bee shrimp. Taiwan Bee colour is a RECESSIVE trait: an animal needs two copies of the gene before the colour appears at all. The consequence is very concrete — cross a Taiwan Bee with a Crystal and the F1 generation does NOT come out Taiwan Bee. It comes out looking like ordinary bee shrimp, carrying the Taiwan Bee gene hidden. The hobby calls those Mischlings. They are not junk: Mischlings are the standard tool for restoring vigour to a Taiwan Bee line that has been inbred too long — you breed out to Mischlings, then pair Mischlings back together so the recessive colour re-emerges. And here is the point that matters most to a buyer: **a clean Blue Bolt colony breeds Blue Bolt.** Unlike hybrid lines such as the Fancy Tiger, which throw a whole spread of patterns, the only thing that varies between Blue Bolt siblings is DEPTH — from near-white with blue cheeks through to solid royal blue. Shrimplets hatch pale and colour up with age, so never grade a juvenile.
One Taiwan Bee cross destroys a line permanently. Taiwan Bee (Blue Bolt, King Kong, Panda, Wine Red, Shadow) is not a grade — it is a homozygous RECESSIVE condition. What makes it dangerous: the F1 offspring of such a cross (called Mischlings) look like ordinary, slightly washed-out crystals while INVISIBLY carrying the allele. You cannot see it, and neither can the seller, until the F2 generation erupts in every direction and the pure line you spent years building is gone. No source documents a contaminated line ever being restored. So: a PRL/PBL tank is a dedicated tank — no other Caridina in it, not even 'just one'.
A Blue Bolt CANNOT hybridise with Neocaridina — different genus, and that is the only piece of good news in this section. It WILL cross with: tiger shrimp (Caridina mariae), the entire Crystal/Bee group, and every other Taiwan Bee colour class (Panda, King Kong, Wine Red, Blue Steel…). Which means the line you will read everywhere — 'Taiwan Bees can all live together' — is true only about SURVIVAL. As breeding advice it is the worst possible counsel: housing Blue Bolt with King Kong is the fastest way to have neither line left two generations later.
With Blue Bolt, the thing that decides the price is invisible in any photograph: whether the parent colony is clean. A clean colony throws Blue Bolt; a colony contaminated with another Taiwan Bee colour or with tiger blood throws a scatter, and you only find out months later — by which point it cannot be undone. Our Blue Bolt colony is kept in a dedicated system with no other Taiwan Bee colour class anywhere in it. Breeding grade is selected out of that parent colony; pet grade is healthy stock that did not make the breeding cut, and is the sensible choice for a display tank. Tell us which you actually need — we advise by purpose and do not push the expensive option.
It breeds true — but only when the water is cool enough
A female carries roughly 20–40 eggs and broods them for 28–35 days (four to five weeks) before they hatch directly into ~2 mm miniature adults — no larval stage, no brackish phase, no special fry food. Maturity arrives at around three to four months. Females are larger with a noticeably deeper, rounder abdomen. But the number that matters most to a Vietnamese keeper is not in that list: **above roughly 28°C the colony survives but essentially stops breeding**, with shortened lifespan and raised disease risk. Alive is not the same as breeding — which is why serious breeders here spend money on cooling before they spend it on more expensive stock. Shrimplets do not die of missing powdered food. They die because the tank is not mature enough: a freshly set-up tank does not carry the biofilm on soil, leaf litter and filter media that a 2 mm animal grazes on all day. That is the real reason behind 'run it empty for four to six weeks first'.
The 'white ring of death' — a white gap between carapace and abdomen where a shrimp cannot finish its moult — is untreatable and only preventable. It almost always follows a large water change or a GH swing. Below GH 4 the shell cannot form at all. So: change 10% weekly or 10–20% monthly, DRIP it in rather than pouring, and respect three limits — TDS moving 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.
The Bee shrimp acclimation protocol — step by step
1 · Open the parcel immediately, lights off
Do not leave the sealed box for later. The shrimp have been in the dark for more than a day. Photograph the unopened bags before opening — that is your evidence if a claim is needed.
2 · Equalise temperature first
Float the sealed bag for 15–20 minutes. A sudden temperature step is more dangerous than sitting at a less-than-ideal temperature. The safe limit is 2–3°C.
3 · Decant shrimp and bag water into a separate container
Not into the tank. A clean bowl or bucket, held at tank temperature.
4 · Drip for 2–3 hours
At 1–2 drops per second. Run two cycles: drip until full over 30–60 minutes, pour most of it away, then drip to full again — this pushes the mix above 75% tank water. For high-value Taiwan Bee morphs, extend to 3–4 hours. Beyond two hours, add a small airstone to the container.
5 · NET the shrimp across — never pour bag water in
This is the rule you do not break. Bag water carries accumulated ammonia, bacteria from a crowded transport environment, and completely different parameters. It goes down the sink.
6 · Leave them alone
Lights off for the rest of the day, NO food for 24 hours, NO water change for the first 7 days. Shrimp sitting still for several hours after introduction is normal, not dying.
Something most sellers will not say out loud: the death that causes the most disputes does NOT happen at unboxing. Rehousing commonly triggers a moult, and if the receiving tank's GH is wrong that moult fails — the shrimp dies 24–72 hours later having looked perfectly fine on arrival. Which is why the receiving tank must be ready BEFORE you order, not prepared on the day. Bee shrimp also travel less well than Neocaridina: a safe window of 18–24 hours in an air-filled bag and 36–48 hours on pure oxygen, against 24–36 and 48–72 for Neocaridina. We stop feeding 24–48 hours before packing — the single most effective way to limit ammonia in the bag.
The matching set-up
Feed 2–3 times a WEEK, not daily, with 1–2 deliberate fasting days. Portion: a fingernail-sized pinch per 10–20 shrimp, cleared within 2–3 hours — anything left at 4 hours comes out and the next portion goes down. Overfeeding is the number one cause of death: it produces ammonia, drives bacterial blooms that crash oxygen, and feeds planaria, hydra and Vorticella. Put another way, planaria and hydra are not bad luck — they are a readout of surplus food. If they appear, cut feeding before reaching for chemicals. Rotate foods: shrimp pellets, blanched vegetables (courgette, kale), dried catappa leaves — variety matters more than the protein percentage on the label. Bacteria powders such as Bacter AE must be dosed at 1/8 to 1/2 of the label amount, 2–3 times a week: the manufacturer's dose causes bacterial blooms and oxygen crashes.
With Taiwan Bees, overfeeding is the single most common cause of a wipe-out — ahead of temperature. Uneaten food rotting in the substrate degrades the very soil the tank depends on to hold pH, and a bacterial bloom follows. The healthiest colony is a slightly hungry one with plenty of biofilm to graze.
Dissolved copper kills shrimp at very low concentrations. The real culprits: copper-based fish medications (a fish dose runs 2–3× the shrimp-lethal level), snail treatments, concentrated micro fertilisers, copper plumbing and pesticide-treated plants. Dietary copper, by contrast, is essential — roughly 40% of a shrimp's body copper sits in haemocyanin, the molecule that carries oxygen in its blood. Needed from food, not from water.
The set-up for a Bee shrimp tank is fundamentally different from a Neocaridina tank, and the three items below are requirements rather than upgrades. The active soil holds pH and consumes KH — without it nothing else matters. Gray Powder handles the culture: seeding and holding the beneficial bacteria, growing the biofilm the shrimp graze, and easing stress at introduction, during moults and after water changes — far more important here than in a Neocaridina tank, because shrimplet survival depends on that biofilm. Yellow Powder adds vitamins and protein. The bio filter runs on an airlift, so it filters and aerates at once — and as noted above, aeration is the best money you can spend keeping these at Vietnamese room temperature.
Do not order until the tank is ready
A Bee tank needs four to six weeks running empty on active soil before the first shrimp goes in — not the two weeks most care sheets quote. A Taiwan Bee additionally needs a DEDICATED tank: it crosses with tiger shrimp, with Crystals and with every other Taiwan Bee colour class. Message Jack Shrimp before you set up; advice is free, and we would rather lose an order than let you lose a colony.
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