The essentials

Keeping Neocaridina in Switzerland

The complete guide for Swiss tanks: water parameters, furnishings, food and what to do if something goes wrong.

Written by Valentin Fischer, aquarist and operator of Garnelenfischer
Published on 09.09.2026 · Last checked for content on 14.10.2026

Neocaridina davidi is the entry-level shrimp. It can withstand temperatures from 5 to 30 °C, copes well with hard Swiss tap water, does not need heating and reproduces without any intervention. If you pay attention to the following points, you will have more animals after a year than at the beginning.

1. The right tank

Twenty litres is the sensible lower limit, thirty to sixty litres make everything easier. The reason is not the space required by the animals, but rather the stability: in little water, temperature fluctuations, leftover food and evaporation have a greater impact. A tank with 54 litres forgives mistakes that a 10 litre nano does not.

Equipment that is really necessary:

• Sponge filter with air pump. Suction-safe, inexpensive and at the same time a pasture area. An external filter is also possible, but it definitely needs suction protection, otherwise the offspring will disappear.
• Dark ground. Dark coloured gravel or sand. Neocaridina easily adapt their colour to the surface; On light sand, all colours appear paler. Exception: Black Rose and Chocolate appear better on a light background.
• Plants and moss. Java moss, Christmas moss, hornwort, Anubias. Moss is the single most important item in the shrimp tank: a hiding place for freshly skinned animals, a nursery for the offspring, a collection point for biofilm.
• Leaves and roots. Dried beech, oak or sea almond tree leaves provide permanent food and tannins.
• Lid or low water level. Shrimp climb. If there is a lack of oxygen, they sometimes migrate up the filter line.

There is no need for heating in a normally heated Swiss apartment. At 19 to 23 °C, Neocaridina are in the best range. Below 18 °C they become sluggish and reproduce more slowly, which is not harmful, just slower. Above 27 °C the oxygen content drops, then an additional air pump helps.

2. Swiss tap water and shrimp

The good news first: Neocaridina davidi like medium to hard water. This is exactly what comes out of the tap in many parts of Switzerland. Unlike bee shrimp (Caridina), it does not require an osmosis system or hardening salt.

The exact values for your community can be found in your water supplier's annual drinking water analysis, usually as a PDF on the community website. A droplet test for GH and KH costs around CHF 15 and answers the question itself in five minutes.

Target area for Neocaridina: GH 6 to 20 °dGH, KH 3 to 15 °dKH, pH 6.5 to 8.0, Conductivity 200 to 800 µS/cm. Consistency is more important than the exact value. A tank that runs stably at 22 °dGH is better than one that fluctuates between 8 and 18.

3. Cycle the tank before adding animals

A new tank needs three to four weeks until the filter has enough bacteria to break down ammonium and nitrite. This time is non-negotiable. Even trace amounts of nitrite are deadly to shrimp, and you can't see it in the water.

1. Set up the tank, fill it with water, put the filter and lighting into operation.
2. Insert plants. They use up nutrients and speed up the process.
3. Add a small amount of food or a piece of leaves as starter food for the bacteria.
4. Starting from day 14, measure nitrite every few days. It first rises, then it falls.
5. Only when nitrite remains at zero for several days are animals allowed to move in.

If you want to shorten the process, take filter material or sludge from a running, healthy tank. This halves the waiting time. Bacteria starters from the bottle help a little, but do not replace the measurement.

4. The move in

Shrimp are sensitive to sudden changes in conductivity, not so much to temperature. That's why it's not adjusted quickly, but rather dripped for two to three hours. The complete instructions are in the article Acclimating shrimp with the drip method.

Short version: Open the bag, put the contents including the animals in a bucket, slowly add tank water using an air hose and a clamp until the volume has tripled to quadrupled, then place the animals into the tank using the net or your hand. The transport water remains in the bucket.

5. feeding

The most common cause of death for shrimp in beginner tanks is not starvation, but overfeeding. Neocaridina eat biofilm, algae growth and decomposed leaves all day long. Supplementary food is optional, not compulsory.

• Two to three times a week a quantity that is completely gone in two to three hours.
• Permanent food: dried leaves (beech, oak, sea almond tree), alder cones, a piece of moss ball.
• Variety: Shrimp food with plant content, occasionally blanched spinach, zucchini or nettle. Protein food (frozen food, protein sticks) no more than once a week.
• Holidays: Up to two weeks without additional food is not a problem if there are leaves and moss in the tank. No automatic feeder, no holiday ball.

6. Care in everyday life

A retracted shrimp tank is easier to maintain than a fish tank. The weekly plan:

7. Propagation

Neocaridina reproduce in fresh water without an intermediate stage. There is no need for breeding tanks or brackish water. If the conditions are right, it will happen by itself.

A female carries 20 to 30 eggs under her abdomen for around three to four weeks and continuously fans them with her swimming legs to supply them with oxygen. The young hatch as miniature shrimp measuring approximately 2 mm and eat the same things as their parents from the first day. They only need two things: thick moss to hide in and no fish to consider them food.

You can recognize the sexes from around 1.5 cm: Females are larger, more strongly coloured, have a rounded abdomen and often a visible yellowish ovary in the neck (the so-called saddle formation). Males remain slimmer and paler.

8. Colours and crossings

All colourful Neocaridina come from the same, originally inconspicuous brown Wild form. Red, blue, yellow, orange, green, black and the Rili patterns are cultivated forms. This has a practical consequence: they cross each other without any problems.

If you put Blue Dream and Yellow Fire in the same tank, after two to three generations you will have wild-coloured, brownish animals again. This is not a problem for the animals, but your colour is gone and cannot be restored.

Selection is also worthwhile within a colour: If you keep the best-coloured animals for further breeding and sort out pale specimens, you will have a stronger line after a few generations. This is exactly how the colours that you can buy today were created.

9. If something goes wrong

In summary

A 20 to 60 litre tank, dark substrate, moss, sponge filter, Swiss tap water, run in for four weeks, use ten animals, feed sparingly, change small amounts weekly. Nothing more is needed. Once you've read this text, you'll know more than most people who get advice from pet shops.

Sources and last update

All specialist sources accessed on 11 September 2026. The target areas in this text are the fisherman's husbandry recommendations from his private husbandry, not study results. Where a source says something different than what is recommended here, it is expressly stated.

Where we differ from the sources and why. The temperature study above identifies 28 °C as optimal for rearing. We nevertheless recommend 19 to 23 °C. A breeding facility optimises growth and reproduction rates; an unheated living-room aquarium does not. This is a care decision, not a study finding. The statement that the species can also survive 5 °C comes from our own observations and appears in none of the sources listed here.

• Tropea, C., Stumpf, L., López Greco, L. S. (2015): Effect of temperature on biochemical composition, growth and reproduction of the ornamental red cherry shrimp Neocaridina heteropoda heteropoda. PLOS ONE 10(3), e0119468. 24, 28 and 32 °C were tested. The study names 28 °C as the optimum for rearing; at 32 °C, all females that reached sexual maturity and mated lost their eggs. doi.org
• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (2025): Cherry Shrimp (Neocaridina davidi) Ecological Risk Screening Summary. March 2025, revised April 2025, web version dated 13 June 2025. Citing Prati and others (2024), it reports 14 to 30 °C, pH 6 to 8.2 and total hardness of 0 to 27 for captive breeding. This is a measured tolerance range, not a care recommendation, and is wider than ours. fws.gov
• Viau, V. E., Perez, J. G., Tomas, A. L., Fracas, P. A., Veira, F. B., Vatnick, I., López Greco, L. S. (2020): Breeding and life cycle of the ornamental freshwater shrimp Neocaridina davidi in a biofilm-based culture system. Aquaculture Research 51(9), 3847 to 3864. Proves that the species goes through its full life cycle on growth. This is the reason for the sparing feeding in this text. wiley.com
• Kubitza, F. (2026): Water quality impacts on health and performance of fish and shrimp, Part 3: The nitrogenous compounds ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. Global Seafood Alliance, 6 July 2026. The toxic proportion of ammonia in total ammonium rises sharply with the pH value: at 28 °C, according to this source, it is 0.71 percent at pH 7.0, 6.6 percent at pH 8.0 and 41.7 percent at pH 9.0. globalseafood.org
• Regional hardness values with provider and retrieval date are in the guide Swiss tap water for shrimp.