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Hello. I started a colony of 10 opae ula in a small 4L glass cube back in May 2020 and then upgraded to a 12L aquarium with heater and sponge filter with about 30 shrimp. They are doing well and thriving and breeding like crazy. However, It seems that all my berried females are pink in color. I have a mix of shrimp ranging from clear to pink to blood red (even yellow?!?!) but am concerned maybe the pregnant females aren’t getting adequate nutrition and so they are paler in color. Can anyone please recommend a good food to boost the red coloration? They are subsisting mostly on diatoms, algae and once a month crushed fish flakes. I have included pics to show how the disparity in coloration of the shrimp compared to berried females. I don’t think water parameters would be stressing them out as they are breeding prolifically ( see pic with larvae) so perhaps I just need to supplement food. Thanks in advance for the help.

There is no food to boost color. You cannot alter the color.

Selective breeding is the way to go if you are going to go for deep red shrimp.


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I thought you cannot selectively breed Opae Ula?

Keep removing the pale ones so they don’t breed with red ones.


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Thank you for the advice. I am not looking to selectively breed. I was just concerned that the berried females seemed pale; however it could just very well be that they are pale pink females to begin with. I do have another question: what is a normal survival rate for the larvae? I understand that it has been about 2 weeks and some have started swimming horizontally but they seem to all have disappeared. I had well over 40 larvae and now only see 6 floating and maybe 5 shrimplets grazing. Do they just go into hiding? Or should Iassume a lot did not survive? Thanks for any input.

This is normal behaviour and you will see them in a few weeks/months when they have grown a little .

Nice pictures. Keep them coming.

Happy to report that even as the first batch of larvae disappeared, we have another new 30+ that just got released and berried RED females!

Woah. Nice!