PBL High Grade SSS — Pure Black Line
The highest grade of pure black line we keep. Porcelain-thick opaque white, neutral black with no orange cast, intricate head markings — and above all a pedigree that has bred true for many generations: no Golden Bee, no off-colour animals.
A pure line is not visible in a photograph. It is proven by what the colony throws.
From a Guangdong stream to a glass tank
The black bee (Black Bee / Crystal Black) is the original look of the line — black is the DOMINANT colour, and the more famous red is the recessive mutation, selected by Hisayasu Suzuki in Japan in 1996. Pure Black Line is the next step: not a prettier grade but a black colony bred clean of the recessive red and of Golden Bee introgression over many generations, until the colony throws nothing but black and white. The irony is that the most expensive part of this shrimp is the part you cannot see in a photograph.
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 recognise an SSS-grade PBL
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.
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).
Our PBL line at a glance
- Line
- Pure Black Line (PBL) — pure black bee shrimp
- Scientific name
- Caridina cantonensis (Bee complex)
- Grade
- SSS — top of the international C→SSS ladder
- Base colour
- Neutral black, no orange cast
- White coverage
- From roughly 75% up, colour confined to head and tail
- Colour genetics
- Black is dominant; a pure line carries no recessive red
- Adult size
- 2.5–3cm
- Lifespan
- About 18 months, up to ~2 years
- Clutch size
- 20–30eggs
- Difficulty
- Intermediate to advanced — not a first tank
- Housing
- Dedicated tank, never with other Caridina lines
Why one shrimp is 200,000₫ and another is 25,000₫
Both are called 'black bee shrimp', but the distance between an S-grade juvenile and an adult SSS from a pure line is the distance between a good-looking shrimp and a shrimp you can breed from. The ladder below is the international scale we use to price every Bee shrimp on the farm — and we publish it so you can check it against the actual photograph rather than take a grade letter on trust.
- C / B
- Glassy, see-through segments still present
- A
- Complete countable white bands, thin but solid — no translucent patches
- S / S+
- White and colour both OPAQUE, clean band edges, evenly alternating · Tiger Tooth, V-band
- SS / SS+
- Mid-body band collapsed into a DISC, white rostrum and tail fan; SS+ adds coloured legs · Hinomaru, No Entry, Half Moon
- SSS / SSS+
- From ~75% white up, colour confined to head and tail, zero translucency · Mosura, Crown, Flower, Heart
The rule that governs the whole ladder: OPACITY beats COVERAGE. A shrimp with thick, dense white over a small area outranks one with more white that you can see through. And here is where people are surprised — full white coverage does NOT reach the top grade, because the ladder rewards CONTRAST. An all-white shrimp (Golden Bee / Snow White) is a separate STRAIN that breeds true, not a grade — and if one shows up in a Red Bee colony that is a purity fault, not good luck.
The named patterns and where they really sit
Why do two shrimp both called 'bee shrimp' differ tenfold in price? Six things decide it, in order of weight: (1) the OPACITY of the white — the single biggest factor; (2) colour saturation, and experienced breeders will almost always take a better-coloured lower grade over a washed-out higher one; (3) shell thickness — a marker of a good line, thin see-through shell is ordinary stock; (4) coloured legs and pleopods — the one check you can make yourself from a photo, clear legs mean ordinary shrimp; (5) band symmetry and clean edges; (6) and the most expensive factor, the one you cannot see at all: line purity.
Grading is a hobby convention, NOT an official standard. Two systems run in parallel: the international C→B→A→S→SS→SSS ladder and the German K0–K14 scale (K14 ≈ SSS) — with no official conversion between them, and even within the German system vendors read the numbers differently. Hence the Jack Shrimp rule: THE PHOTOGRAPH GOVERNS, and the grade letter is shorthand for that photograph. Every individual or batch is photographed, and the price reflects our own assessment on the international C–SSS ladder.
A PBL is not sold on its photograph — it is sold on what the colony throws
This is the most important section on the page. 'Pure line' is NOT a prettier grade — it is a claim about pedigree, and it is proven only by what the colony THROWS, never by a photograph. A true PBL colony produces only black-and-white offspring: no Snow White, no Golden Bee, no off-colour animals. An ordinary bee colony can throw black, red and Golden Bee from the same clutch. Put differently: you are paying for PREDICTABILITY in the next generation, not for the shrimp in front of you. And to be clear — grade and purity are separate things. A true PBL still throws a spread of grades. Pure breeds true to COLOUR and LINE, not to GRADE.
The bee-shrimp line map — pure and impure
Everything descends from the wild bee shrimp of Guangdong and Hong Kong. The left column lists lines that are genetically compatible with each other; the right column is the recessive group that must never enter a pure-line tank.
- Red Bee / Crystal RedRed mutation, Japan 1996 — Hisayasu Suzuki, autosomal recessive
- Black Bee / Crystal BlackBlack is the DOMINANT colour — the original look of the line
- PBL — Pure Black LinePure black line, carries no recessive red
- PRL — Pure Red LinePure red line, no Golden Bee introgression for many generations
- Golden Bee / Snow WhiteA separate STRAIN that breeds true — inside a Red Bee colony it is a purity fault
- Blue Bolthomozygous recessive
- King Kong / Pandahomozygous recessive
- Wine Red / Red Rubya Taiwan Bee STRAIN, not a Red Bee grade
- Shadowthe most demanding group, the narrowest parameters
The F1 offspring (Mischlings) look like slightly washed-out ordinary crystals but still carry the allele. That is why one cross ends a line.
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'.
Our PBL colony is kept in a dedicated system with no other Caridina line anywhere in it, and it is judged by the only test that means anything: its offspring. If you are buying breeding stock, ask any seller — including us — one direct question: 'what colours does this colony throw?' Anyone actually keeping a pure line can answer it immediately. And if you simply want a good-looking black shrimp tank rather than breeding stock, tell us: there is far cheaper lower-grade stock and we will point you at the right thing.
Fewer eggs than Neocaridina — and shrimplets need a mature tank
A female carries about 20–30 eggs (range 10–30) — FEWER than Neocaridina, and one of the reasons Bee shrimp cost more. Incubation is roughly 30 days at 22°C, hatching straight into fully formed shrimplets with no larval stage. Maturity comes at 3–4.5 months and a generation runs 4–5.5 months. The most important breeding condition is NOT temperature but pH: above 7 the colony stops recruiting almost entirely. And shrimplets do not starve for want of pellets — they starve in an immature tank, because detritus and biofilm make up as much as 93% of their gut contents. Adults looking healthy while each batch of babies vanishes is the signature of a young tank, not a disease.
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.
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 4–8 weeks running empty on active soil before the first shrimp goes in — not the two weeks most care sheets quote. 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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