Snowball

Sold out for now. Put your email on the card below and we will tell you when it is back. Bred in Adelaide and posted express on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Posted Monday Your order can still go in this box until 8pm Adelaide time the night before ·
Snowball shrimp — illustration of the shrimp we sell, side-on on a black background Illustration
This picture is an illustration. We made it to show the colour, the pattern and how solid the colour is. It is not a photo of the shrimp in your box. About our pictures
Snowball shrimp — illustration of the shrimp we sell, side-on on a black background IllustrationSnowball

Snowball

Neocaridina cf. zhangjiajiensis

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Solid white. The eggs look like tiny snowballs, and that is where the name comes from.

Tap water is fine Tap water with a conditioner (it takes out the chlorine). Add minerals if your tap water is very soft. Water & care →

Breeds with every other Neocaridina colour. Keep one colour per tank. Why →

$9.50 each other shops $9.95

5 delivered $77.49 · $15.50 each with postage
20 delivered $199.99. $10 each, and postage drops to $9.99

Register to buy. We come to you first when the next batch is ready — no payment now.

What it is

Solid white. The eggs look like tiny snowballs, and that is where the name comes from. Sold under the name Neocaridina cf. zhangjiajiensis.

What water does it need?

Tap water with a conditioner (it takes out the chlorine) suits these across most of Australia. They breed on their own. One thing to know: Melbourne and some Sydney supplies are very soft, which means very few minerals in the water. GH is the general hardness reading on a test kit (not the KH reading). Below about 4 dGH, a shrimp has trouble hardening its new shell after a moult (when it sheds its shell to grow). If that is your water, add shrimp minerals (sold as a remineraliser, a powder that puts minerals back in) or leave a piece of cuttlebone in the tank. Both are cheap. It is the difference between a group that grows and one that quietly does not. Steady water matters far more than perfect water.

In the table: pH is how acid or alkaline the water is. GH is the minerals in the water. KH is the part that holds pH steady. TDS is everything in the water added up.

pH6.5 – 7.8
GH (hardness)6 – 12 dGH
KH (carbonate)2 – 8 dKH
TDS (total minerals)150 – 250 ppm
Temperature18 – 26 °C

The full story, including cycling your tank, copper and which fish are safe, is on the water & care page. Read it before you order, not after.

Will they breed? Can I mix them?

They breed easily once they settle in. Ten will have babies within a couple of months.

Keep one kind per tank. This shrimp will breed with every other Neocaridina colour we sell (Neocaridina is the cherry shrimp family). Mixed babies come out plain brown, like a wild shrimp. The mixed babies are healthy, but the colour is lost. Within a generation or two, Neocaridina babies go back to plain wild brown. Once that happens, you cannot get the colour back. Neocaridina (cherries) and Caridina (crystals and tigers) are different groups of shrimp and cannot breed with each other. So you can keep one of each in the same tank, if the water suits both.

What does it cost delivered?

$9.50 a shrimp. We sell them in packs of 5. One foam express box costs the same to send whether it holds 5 shrimp or thirty. So 5 delivered is $77.49. That is $15.50 each with postage in. The same $29.99 post carries a bigger box too. It drops to $9.99 once your shrimp come to $149. So the more you order, the less each shrimp costs. Everything goes out on a Monday or a Tuesday, packed that morning. Every shrimp is guaranteed to arrive alive. The guarantee is short, and it says what it does not cover.

See every shrimp we sell →