[moderndayescape]

I'm having trouble deciding between the Fluval Ebi, or the Biorb Life 16 gallon. I'm soon recieving a 500 dollar check and am planning on setting up a new tank and getting rid of my planted 10 gallon (filled with hitchhiker snails). So pros and cons of each tank?

 

[Geniusdudekiran]

Ebi, all the way. Come with everything you need for a great price. And then you can spend the rest of the other $400 on shrimp!

 

[moderndayescape]

Great plan! Is there any other breedable shrimp other than red cherries and crystal reds? I'm new to shrimp, only having ghost shrimp before, one of which berried. So I'd like to have a less common type that is good for beginners.

 

[Jadelin]

I agree that the Ebi is better; the design of the Life would be annoying to me, because you can't see in on the sides. Also, I know from experience that a tank that you can see into from both the front and the back is hard to scape, especially when you have that small of depth from front to back.

There are lots of breedable shrimps; nearly all shrimps in the hobby are breedable except Amano shrimp. If you want to go with something easy that is a little less common, you could try yellow shrimp, which are a yellow version of red cherry shrimp and breed just as well. You could also try blue pearl or snowball shrimp, which are closely related to red cherry shrimp. You can only have one of these types of shrimp in your tank or they will interbreed.

In addition to crystal reds there are also crystal blacks. There are lots of crazy color morphs of crystal red shrimp that cost a lot (black king king, mosuras, etc). Or you could do tiger shrimp, or blue tiger shrimp. You can only get one of these types of shrimp in a tank to avoid interbreeding. But you can get one from this group and one from the other group and they would be fine.

 

[moderndayescape]

What would happen if different types interbred? Would they're color and patterns be odd, or would they not breed true?

 

[Jadelin]

They would most likely revert to natural coloration, which in the case of the red/yellow and blue pearl/snowball shrimp is brown. So you get unattractive offspring. (If you like the brown look, it's possible to find wild-type Neocaridina heteropoda) Also, you won't be able to sell the offspring without letting people know their background, and a lot of people won't want to buy hybridized shrimp because they won't breed true.
Basically if you let them hybridize you're undoing all the work of all the generations of breeding to get the specific color you have.

Some people don't really care if their shrimp hybridize, and you can do whatever you want with your own tank, but if you started with a tank of yellow and red cherry shrimp, pretty soon you'd just have mostly brown ones.

Of course, crossing different kinds of shrimps is how some new color morphs are discovered, but unless you have a breeding setup with a lot of shrimp, you're not really going to be able to come up with any usable new colors/patterns.