Neos Fire Red
Grade 4 of 6 on the red scale. Almost fully opaque red, legs evenly red with no white blotching, eggs and saddle already hard to see through the shell. One step above High Sakura, one below Painted Fire Red — and holding that level means culling continuously.
One colour per tank. That is the entire secret to keeping a colour colony beautiful for years.
Where Fire Red sits on the red scale
Fire Red is not a separate strain — it is one step on the red scale bred up out of the mottled brown wild-type animal: Cherry → Sakura → High Sakura (Grade AA) → Fire Red → Painted Fire Red → Bloody Mary. Its colour lives in the SHELL: pigment sits in the carapace itself, so the shrimp reads as solid and painted-on, with red carrying right down the legs. That is also what separates it from Bloody Mary, whose crimson sits in the TISSUE under a semi-transparent shell — and which comes off the chocolate line, not this one.
How to read a correctly graded Fire Red
Ideal keeping conditions
This is the real-world band, not a figure copied from a temperate-climate care sheet. Inside it there is a sweeter spot if you want to dial things in: pH 7.0–7.5, GH 6–8, TDS 180–220, KH 3–5. But a tank sitting at GH 4 keeps and breeds them perfectly well — below 4 is where failed moults start. GH supplies the calcium and magnesium for moulting: too little and you get the 'white ring of death', where a shrimp cannot finish its moult. KH stops the pH falling. And stability still beats perfection — a colony held steady at GH 5 outperforms one chased up and down around GH 8.
Use an INERT substrate — gravel, sand or an inert shrimp gravel. Never use the active buffering soil sold for Bee/Taiwan Bee shrimp. Active soil pulls pH and KH below what Neocaridina need, and it is the most common set-up mistake beginners make.
Keeping them at tropical room temperature is CORRECT — no chiller, and no need to force the tank down to 22–24°C. Neocaridina is native to Vietnam, Taiwan and southern China, where wild water reaches close to 30°C in summer. A controlled culture study at 24 / 28 / 32°C is clear: 28°C is the optimum for growth, maturation and breeding, and it also gave the highest survival. The real ceiling is 30°C — past it females start dropping their eggs and recruitment stops; at 32°C every female loses her clutch. The price of running warm at 27–29°C is a faster metabolism: quick growth and heavy breeding, but a shorter individual lifespan and thinner energy reserves, plus less dissolved oxygen, so aerate and do not overstock. An air-conditioned room at 24–26°C gives longer-lived shrimp that breed more slowly. Both are valid — what kills shrimp is not 28°C, it is going past 30°C and letting the temperature swing.
Fire Red strain profile
- Scientific name
- Neocaridina davidi
- Line
- Red line — grade 4 of 6
- Colour mechanism
- Shell pigment
- Colour stability
- Line holds in a pure colony; grade needs culling
- Drift direction
- Slides back toward Sakura if left alone
- Adult size
- 2–3cm
Strain map — every colour comes from ONE species
Every commercial colour strain is Neocaridina davidi, selectively bred from the mottled brown wild-type animal. They are colour morphs — not separate species, and not hybrids.
- Red lineCherry → Sakura → Fire Red → Painted Fire Red → Red Rili
- Chocolate / brown lineChocolate → Bloody Mary, Black Rose → Carbon Rili
- Yellow lineYellow → Golden Back (dorsal stripe)
- Orange lineOrange Sakura → Orange Rili
- Green lineGreen Jade / Green Diamond — blue plus yellow pigment
- Blue Dreamfrom Carbon Rili — NO red genetics
- Blue Jelly / Blue Velvetfrom Red Rili — still carries red
The two blues look alike but come from different lines. Housing them together brings red genetics back and the colony goes wild-type.
Does Fire Red hold its grade across generations?
In a pure colony Fire Red throws red shrimp — but the grade itself is not fully heritable. Every clutch produces a spread: a few animals reach Painted, most sit on grade, and some fall back to High Sakura. Males will almost always look a grade paler purely because they are male. So holding Fire Red quality is continuous culling — pulling the pale animals out of the breeding tank. Leave it a few generations and the colony drifts toward Sakura. Never house it with another colour; and if you breed, do not run Fire Red with Sakura or Cherry either — the colony averages down to the lower grade.
One colour per tank. Every colour strain is the SAME SPECIES, so they interbreed freely — and because wild-type colour is dominant, a mixed colony reverts to mottled brown within 2–3 generations. It is not reversible in practice. Two colours means two tanks.
'Grade' describes an individual's APPEARANCE — mainly opacity and colour coverage — not a genetic category. A high-grade pair still throws a spread every clutch, and males always look a grade paler simply because they are male. Holding a grade means culling continuously.
Neocaridina, Bee and Sulawesi need three different waters
- Neocaridina (colour shrimp)
- 24–29°C · pH 6.8–7.8 · GH 4–12 · KH 2–8 · INERT substrate
- Bee / Taiwan Bee (Caridina)
- 20–24°C · pH 5.8–6.8 · GH 4–6 · KH 0–1 · active acid soil
- Sulawesi shrimp & snails
- 27–30°C · pH 7.8–8.5 · GH 6–8 · KH 3–6 · alkaline substrate
Genetically, Neocaridina CANNOT hybridise with Bee shrimp or Sulawesi shrimp — different genera do not interbreed. But the three groups need three completely different waters, so they cannot share one system. This is the single most common piece of bad shop advice. Read the table carefully: what separates Neocaridina from Sulawesi is NOT temperature — the two overlap at 27–29°C — it is pH and KH. Sulawesi need alkaline water at pH 7.8–8.5 with a maintained KH, where Neocaridina sit right at the top edge of their range. Bee shrimp are the opposite again: acidic, KH near zero, on buffering soil.
The matching set-up
Omnivorous grazers: biofilm, algae and detritus. Feed every 2–3 days, not daily — leftovers reduce breeding and drive planaria and hydra. Carotenoid-rich food (astaxanthin, spirulina) genuinely deepens expressed colour but cannot change genetics. Iodine supplements are not needed for moulting — GH is. And leave shed moults in the tank; the shrimp eat them back for the minerals.
Dissolved copper is lethal at roughly 0.06–0.08 mg/L. The real killers are copper-based fish medications, snail treatments, concentrated micro fertilisers, copper plumbing and pesticide-treated plants. Dietary copper, on the other hand, is essential — shrimp blood carries oxygen using copper-based hemocyanin. Note that copper adsorbs into silicone and leaches back out for months.
The bacterial duo for a cold-water shrimp tank: Gray Powder handles the culture — seeding and holding the beneficial bacteria, growing the biofilm the shrimp graze on, steadying biological filtration and easing stress at introduction, during moults and after water changes. Yellow Powder adds bacteria, vitamins and protein for colour and steady breeding. Use both together.
New to colour shrimp?
Read the full Jack Shrimp guide to a Neocaridina tank: inert substrate, GH/KH minerals, cycling, safe acclimation and holding colour across generations.
Read the set-up guide
