# Help me grade my cherry shrimps?



## Splak (May 1, 2013)

Hey all, I purchased 6 cherry's 2 months ago from Big Al's and 6 more today again from Al's.

The first time I purchased my 6 they had a label on the tank that said "all cherry's are painted red" and today it said "all cherry's are fire red".

I am quite happy with the shrimp, stunning red compared to the normal cherry's I normally see elsewhere.

But, as I did some research tonight and looked at some different sites for grading, I feel that they might not actually be painted and fire reds.

I placed 1 or 2 of my 12 in the fire red category, and the rest as High grade Sakura.

I used this site for grading: http://www.shrimpnow.com/content.php/285-Grading-system-of-Cherry-to-Fire-Red-Shrimps

Any help would be awesome, when they start breeding like rabbits, is there the possibility of having real Painted red and fire reds produced from Sakura, like there is from CRS?
If so, I will just cull low grades once they start breeding.

Pictures:

Will try and get some better photo's soon!


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## Shrimp Daddy (Mar 30, 2013)

yes they are. make sure you don't mix them with other neos.


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## randy (Jan 29, 2012)

Red Cherry grading is as messy as CRS. I follow pretty much the same post you referred to but still it's hard to tell between PFR and FR from those grading rules. So, I call mine with full red legs and more solid red as PFRs, 100% (or nearly) red coverage on body as FR, lesser coverage as sakura, and even lesser as regular cherry.

As far as I know, all grades are bred together in the "cherry farms", then sorted at sale size into different grade, unless they are from individual breeders who do things differently. If BA got them from import then likely they will throw all different grades in F1, you will then need to work on them carefully (remove the lesser quality one diligently) to come to a better and more stable strain of your own.

However, since Bloody Mary came out, PFRs aren't not the highest grade in the family anymore. The breeds in Bloody Mary are still kept as secret and not talked about much on the internet.


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## Splak (May 1, 2013)

Thanks for the info, just culled a few without full body coverage.


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

Sorry, don't mean to hijack this thread, I'm just curious if anybody knows when cherry shrimp first showed up in the hobby, and when they started selectively breeding for colour variants, and then the various colour grades ? 

They all come from the wild form which is not very colourful at all, and now look at the all the variations there are today. I'm wondering how long breeders have been working on them?


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