# Distinguishing male red shrimps?



## Navigarden (Jun 25, 2010)

Males generally have less red, if sakuras or pfr perhaps look to leg coverage? Coloring aside males will be smaller and "thinner" (the part of the lower abdomen, behind head to tail, will look straighter and less convex than a female). Excuse my laymen's terms. You also won't see saddles at all...

Best to just look here, under sexing shows a pic of a male right in front of a female: 
http://www.planetinverts.com/Red Cherry Shrimp.html


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## Navigarden (Jun 25, 2010)

BTW lucky you, with an LFS with super red shrimp lol. I have no such luck with lovely local resources.


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## Option (Oct 2, 2010)

So that was part of my dilenma...I saw some lighter ones but I wanted to be sure they weren't "duller" females. How much lighter are the males suppose to be? If its much much lighter than the females then my LFS may have had a couple. I just didn't want to end up with an overly light colored male and ruin future generations by dilution.


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## penpal (Mar 27, 2010)

This is how I differentiate between the two. Females have a yellow egg blotch in their back behind the head. Males don't.


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## Navigarden (Jun 25, 2010)

if you're looking at sakuras/pfr I wouldn't base gender selection on color as that may be too difficult. Try body shape instead, or just by a large enough batch and (as long as you confirm with the lfs that their shipment did in fact include a random assortment of gender) you should be fine.


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

hold on, lemme find my picture


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

lol here ya go, i know its CRS, but it works for RCS too:


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## chad320 (Mar 7, 2010)

Lol, Liam, I was waiting for a great pic of the difference. And you produced one


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

keep in mind, the body shapes have been exaggerated for the sake of contrast.

But the males in most of our dwarf shrimp have a "lean" look, with the underside of their carapace being concave, whereas females have a "plump" look with the underside of their carapace bulging (slightly to extremely depending on maturity and whether they're saddled)

If you are trying to determine the gender of immature shrimp (not of breeding age), it will be much harder to come to a conclusion... People who have been breeding shrimp for a while will be able to tell the sex of a shrimp much earlier than breeding age, but for someone just learning the differences it would be too much to ask.

The good news is: it gets easier to sort shrimp the longer you're at it, so get started now!


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## ckarr (Nov 14, 2010)

Thanks for the drawings, can you do the same for caridina vs. neocaridina?


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

lol, you mean drawing a neocaridina male and female? Just pretend there's no white part!


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## ckarr (Nov 14, 2010)

A drawing to tell the 2 genus' apart, there must be something other than patterns to tell them apart?


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

minor rostrum differences


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## justin182 (Aug 19, 2009)

Option said:


> What's the best way to distinguish a male Neocaridina (red cherry / sakura / fire reds) from a female? I have a tank full of what appears to be females and I'm looking for a male mate for them. I hear they're less red than the females but all the ones in my LFS look super red so it's hard for me to pick them out!



Were you at Win?


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## Option (Oct 2, 2010)

Yup, I sure was. They have like at least 90% females in that sakura tank. Those females are without doubt the reddest of any Neocaridina shrimps I have ever seen.


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## H82LOS3 (Mar 5, 2009)

mordalphus said:


> lol here ya go, i know its CRS, but it works for RCS too:


LOL nice pic roud:


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## justin182 (Aug 19, 2009)

Option said:


> Yup, I sure was. They have like at least 90% females in that sakura tank. Those females are without doubt the reddest of any Neocaridina shrimps I have ever seen.



Yup, they have really red Sakura for sure. I bought some over there a month ago. Three of them are even much redder than what are supposed to be painted fire red I got earlier. I put those 3 into my ebi tank. The only regret is that I didn't get a male. Kinda hard to distinguish and scoop up males in that dim light. I talked to the lady there (owner?) who also speaks cantonese and she said the shrimps were from Japan. Maybe that's why they are so red?


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## Option (Oct 2, 2010)

After a hard search through the LFS tank, I finally found a male that I was willing to buy...color not nearly as impressive but at least I'm now certain it's a male. BTW, the entire female body curvature thing is much harder to interpret on the crystal red species....I'm looking at all my crystal reds and I can't see any differences in the curvatures, unless I look at my berried ones of course.

Justin - you took those NYC shrimps all the way back to Ohio with you?


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