Halocaridina rubra
This little red shrimp has several common names such as Opae Ula, Hawaiian Volcano Shrimp, Anchialine Shrimp, and Red Volcano Shrimp, but what ever you call it this shrimp is in it's own way a "Super Shrimp". Able to withstand and survive in full strength seawater, freshwater, and everything in between without showing stress or dying! Any other Dwarf Shrimp species we keep would die very quickly is subjected to this drastic a change in water parameters. This is my first attempt at keeping this shrimp as well as maintaining a brackish water aquarium and you can follow my progress here at my Arizona Inverts Blog
I am keeping these shrimp in a 10 gallon tank that was previously set up for freshwater and fully cycled. I removed the moss and snails other than Malaysian Trumpet Snails and began adding sea salt 1/2 cup a day over about 6 days to reach a specific gravity of 1.014.
| Temperature | 70 to 80 degrees F. |
| Water Conditions | This shrimp needs brackish water to do best and breed well with specific gravity of 1.008 to 1.016 for breeding purposes. Will probably live and breed under a much wider range of salinity conditions. I have my tank at 1.014 and was hoping the MTS (snails) would survive the slow acclimation to brackish conditions and they did indeed. |
| Origin | Wild Hawaii, USA |
| Breeding info | fairly easy to breed,young have a larval stage lasting a few days |
| Food | algae foods, regular fish food pellet and flake |
| Size | 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch from what I have seen so far |
| Difficulty | Said to be easy, but will add my own experience as I learn more |
Please remember the chart is a guideline only and these shrimp are very adaptable and will survive in much cooler water with lower or higher salinity than shown, but the parameters shown are recommended for best health and color as well as breeding. As young your Halocaridina rubra Shrimp show red from what I have seen of the young that came in my order. The smallest were about 4mm and the largest about 5/8 of an inch. In their natural habitat these shrimp are typically found in brackish water pools near the sea shore, sometimes in large numbers. Such pools are referred to as anchialine pools.
(from Greek anchialos, meaning near the sea)
These pools are at times subject to drastic water parameter changes including temperature and salinity forcing this small colorful shrimp to become more adaptable or perish as a species.
Keeping these shrimp happy and healthy is as easy as keeping the water very clean and using a sponge filter or keeping a sponge pre filter over your canister or hang on the back filter is recommended to keep baby shrimp from being sucked into the filter.
These shrimp have adapted to be able to survive in the harshest conditions imaginable as mentioned above and this remarkable ability has lead to a horrible fate for many a Halocaridina rubra in what is known as "Bio Spheres" these are very small jar like sealed tanks with some live rock, sea water, and Opae Ula Shrimp. These shrimp slowly starve to death, but will actually live for up to 3 years without water changes, food, or oxygen! Add to this the fact that much of their natural environment has been destroyed by developement and other human activities including collecting for food in the Saltwater aquarium industry.
I will add more photos and info as I observe these shrimp in my tank and will add to this page as info is gathered. I am here to share my experiences mostly as opposed to regirgitating someone else's research results when discussing keeping and breeding these shrimp in captivity.