2 kinds · tap one for a closer look
Peaceful and shy; best kept alone or with tiny peaceful fish such as chili rasboras.
126 species in our list are a good match.
Peaceful and shy; best kept alone or with tiny peaceful fish such as chili rasboras. Needs stable soft water.
Biofilm, powdered shrimp food, blanched spinach and leaf litter, fed sparingly.
Tap a food to see what it is.
Females are larger than males and have a deeper abdomen for carrying eggs; a ripe female shows a 'saddle' of developing eggs behind the head.
Common problems. Tap one to see the signs. This is a guide, not a diagnosis.
Berried livebearer-style (free-swimming shrimplets) · Hard
The female carries the eggs under her abdomen for about 4 weeks (28 days at 22 °C); they hatch as tiny copies of the adults, with no free larval stage.
Keep a group of 15-20 and let them pair up; females moult and then mate within a day or two.
20-40 L tank with active buffered soil, RO or remineralised soft water (GH 4-6, KH 0-2, pH 5.8-6.8), moss and a sponge filter.
Stable soft water and a small cool water change with RO water often triggers moulting and mating.
Typically 20-30 young per brood after about 3-4 weeks of incubation; young hatch fully formed.
Shrimplets look like tiny adults and graze biofilm; give powdered food and moss and avoid strong flow.
A Taiwan bee line with a deep sky-blue body, sometimes fading into a cloudy white tail; the best grades are solid blue with little or no white. It appeared among the Taiwan bee morphs around 2009.
Blue bolt shrimp are a captive-bred line developed by Taiwanese shrimp breeders in the late 2000s. They come from the Taiwan bee lines, which descend from Caridina cantonensis-group shrimp of southern China. Their deep blue colour makes them prized and costly.
14 facts checked with sources
Freshwater shrimp (invertebrate, decapod), not a fish. Blue bolt is a selectively bred colour line, not a wild species. Klotz & von Rintelen (2014, Zootaxa) found all five ornamental bee shrimp strain samples grouped genetically with Caridina cantonensis (Seriously Fish names 'blue bolt' explicitly), so C. cantonensis (often written C. cf. cantonensis) is the best-supported name. The same paper described the sister species C. logemanni (Hong Kong), which looks like the original aquarium bee shrimp, and one aquarium specimen of logemanni morphology clustered with cantonensis, a possible sign of hybridisation; some sellers label bee/Taiwan bee lines 'Caridina logemanni'. FLAG: Taiwan bee lines ('shadow bees') are of debated origin: a mutation in Taiwanese red bee stock, or a cross of tiger (C. mariae group) x bee shrimp (Lukhaup & Pekny consider the cross viable), and were repeatedly back-crossed to red bee, so they are probably of mixed (possibly hybrid) ancestry. Same decision as species-crystalred.json.
Seriously Fish: New shrimp from Hong Kong and southern China (2014; summarises Klotz & von Rintelen 2014, Zootaxa 3889(2): 151-184) · Lukhaup & Pekny, Aquarium Invertebrates (Dähne Verlag), p. 77 'Taiwan Bee Shrimp or Shadow Shrimp' (published hobby reference book, preview) · Practical Fishkeeping: Freshwater shrimps, the next generation (Chris Lukhaup, Dec 2009; established hobby magazine, author is a shrimp researcher)New value (legacy had none).
Wikipedia: Caridina cantonensis (cites De Grave, Klotz & Cai 2013 IUCN; Yam & Dudgeon 2005; Chen et al. 2020 ZooKeys; hobby sites)Body length (hobby reference; no peer-reviewed size found). Females larger than males (see sexing).
Shrimp Science: Blue Bolt Shrimp care guide (hobby shrimp reference, no author named)Legacy 21-25 °C sits inside Shrimp Science 20-25 °C and Lukhaup & Pekny's 17-26 °C keeping range; breeding 22-24 °C (both Lukhaup sources). PFK gives a cooler keeping range of 17-22 °C.
Shrimp Science: Blue Bolt Shrimp care guide (hobby shrimp reference, no author named) · Practical Fishkeeping: Freshwater shrimps, the next generation (Chris Lukhaup, Dec 2009; established hobby magazine, author is a shrimp researcher) · Lukhaup & Pekny, Aquarium Invertebrates (Dähne Verlag), p. 77 'Taiwan Bee Shrimp or Shadow Shrimp' (published hobby reference book, preview)Sources differ: Shrimp Science 5.5-6.5 (blue bolt), Lukhaup (PFK 2009, book) 6.4-6.9 for breeding Taiwan bees. Legacy 5.8-7.0 spans the overlap of both; usually kept on active (buffering) soil with KH 0-1.
Shrimp Science: Blue Bolt Shrimp care guide (hobby shrimp reference, no author named) · Practical Fishkeeping: Freshwater shrimps, the next generation (Chris Lukhaup, Dec 2009; established hobby magazine, author is a shrimp researcher)Legacy had no hardness; value is new. Same page: KH 0-1, TDS 100-180. Lukhaup gives conductivity about 200 µS/cm. Note: Shrimp Science blue bolt page; it calls blue bolts 'a type of Taiwan bee'.
Shrimp Science: Blue Bolt Shrimp care guide (hobby shrimp reference, no author named)5 US gal = 19 L minimum (Shrimp Science); Lukhaup & Pekny: from 20 L. 38 L (10 gal) or more recommended; Taiwanese breeding tanks were 80 L or larger (PFK).
Shrimp Science: Blue Bolt Shrimp care guide (hobby shrimp reference, no author named) · Lukhaup & Pekny, Aquarium Invertebrates (Dähne Verlag), p. 17 (published hobby reference book, preview)Hobby sources.
Shrimp Science: Blue Bolt Shrimp care guide (hobby shrimp reference, no author named) · Wikipedia: Caridina cantonensis (cites De Grave, Klotz & Cai 2013 IUCN; Yam & Dudgeon 2005; Chen et al. 2020 ZooKeys; hobby sites)Shrimp Science rates it 'Medium' while stressing a narrow soft-water range; legacy 3 (hard) is stricter.
Shrimp Science: Blue Bolt Shrimp care guide (hobby shrimp reference, no author named)New value. Lukhaup (PFK 2009) measured wild habitat at 16 °C, no KH, 12 µS/cm, pH 5.8. Wikipedia's 'Hong King' typo is in the source.
Practical Fishkeeping: Freshwater shrimps, the next generation (Chris Lukhaup, Dec 2009; established hobby magazine, author is a shrimp researcher) · Wikipedia: Caridina cantonensis (cites De Grave, Klotz & Cai 2013 IUCN; Yam & Dudgeon 2005; Chen et al. 2020 ZooKeys; hobby sites) · Seriously Fish: New shrimp from Hong Kong and southern China (2014; summarises Klotz & von Rintelen 2014, Zootaxa 3889(2): 151-184)Dark-bodied blue bolts can make the saddle hard to see.
Wikipedia: Caridina cantonensis (cites De Grave, Klotz & Cai 2013 IUCN; Yam & Dudgeon 2005; Chen et al. 2020 ZooKeys; hobby sites) · Shrimp Science: How to breed dwarf shrimp (hobby shrimp reference)Legacy 10-30 eggs for about 4 weeks; Shrimp Science gives 20-30 for Caridina and Neocaridina in general (not specific to this line). Incubation confirmed.
Shrimp Science: How to breed dwarf shrimp (hobby shrimp reference) · Wikipedia: Caridina cantonensis (cites De Grave, Klotz & Cai 2013 IUCN; Yam & Dudgeon 2005; Chen et al. 2020 ZooKeys; hobby sites)Legacy says 'dark-blue body and white markings'; sources describe sky blue with white only on lower grades/tail. Price claim not checked (prices ignored).
Shrimp Science: Blue Bolt Shrimp care guide (hobby shrimp reference, no author named) · Practical Fishkeeping: Freshwater shrimps, the next generation (Chris Lukhaup, Dec 2009; established hobby magazine, author is a shrimp researcher)