# For the Love of Flower Head



## randy (Jan 29, 2012)

CRS Flower head, also known as SSS+ or K14, is my favourite type of CRS. It's not the most highly valued characteristics in Asia but I just love the way they look. I'm sharing with you my flower head tank, hope you like it too.

All pictures taken with a 3 years old phone, most are over saturated. A few do show the details. Until I get more equipment to take proper pictures, these will have to do.

First, a close up, what a flower head is about. I haven't found a good description, my take is the head gear of the shrimp doesn't have a roundish edge (someone with better English please help), and almost they are all SSS type as I have not seen one that's not. See this one for example.




This one is debatable, but close enough. With that dot, some people also call this type small mosura.


This one was caught molting. 


The one in front shows better flower head than the small mosura in the back.


A cute little one with good white leg coverage.



Good flower pattern but body white can be improved.


Another one, hope I can get the body white to acceptable level in another year or so.


Pretty flower.


You can see the relative size of some of these shrimps.


Group shots.







I can add more pictures if there's interest, all these were taken in about 10 minutes. There are some with more red leg coverage as well but they wouldn't come to the front for a photo op.

A tank tour to finish the post. 
My CRS flower head tank - YouTube

PS: These shrimps are NOT for sale.


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## razoredge (Dec 31, 2011)

Fantasic pictures Randy!


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

I can see why it's called flower head. Almost looks like a daisy type of flower with the dot of colour in the centre, on most of them I see. Neat.


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## BBXB (Oct 7, 2012)

Great looking shrimps. I see you say flowerhead is not the most desirable in Asia? So what is and how would you rate all the patterns based on desirability in Asia?


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## bettaforu (Sep 6, 2009)

Flowerhead/Lightning bolt headgear is the result of crossing CRS x Golden genes which produces the fancy head markings. A lot of Asian breeders prefer not to use golden genes to keep the line more true to form, so you will see a lot of maro/crown headgear only on these lines.

Its a personal preference only whether you like the flowerhead/lightning bolt designs on your Mosuras.

I had both black and red ones last year....they have all since passed away, but like Randy I did like them, and I knew they had golden genetics in their lines.


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## randy (Jan 29, 2012)

BBXB said:


> Great looking shrimps. I see you say flowerhead is not the most desirable in Asia? So what is and how would you rate all the patterns based on desirability in Asia?


Bettaforu answered your question. Desirability is and should be a personal preference but if we really want to "compare", using their market values is probably the only way to go. Because flowerhead or any crazy head gears cause suspicion of golden shrimp in the linage a lot of breeders will steer away from them, especially in Asia.

Main stream in Asia for highly valued shrimps is still hinomaru and no-entry. With heavy cull and good linage, you can see very good colour on these shrimps. There are exceptions though like in anything else in life. For example, this one with some head gears and very good colour, is priced at CAD$2300 (for one shrimp). But you can see it's not a "SSS pattern" that we would use to grade.


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## BBXB (Oct 7, 2012)

Thanks for the explaination Anna and randy. From what I am gathering the mosura hinomaru and no entry fetch a high dollar because they are PRL. 

But what if we assume all shrimps have golden gene, would flowerhead, no entry, crown, hinomaru just come down to personal preference or would one still fetch more over the other in the asia market?


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## randy (Jan 29, 2012)

BBXB said:


> Thanks for the explaination Anna and randy. From what I am gathering the mosura hinomaru and no entry fetch a high dollar because they are PRL.
> 
> But what if we assume all shrimps have golden gene, would flowerhead, no entry, crown, hinomaru just come down to personal preference or would one still fetch more over the other in the asia market?


For non pure line, price is still in the order of SSS > SS > S. But these are normally what they call "water testing shrimps", price is very low. You can normally get them a buck a piece. Because of this most breeders will just concentrate on pure lines to get their investment back.


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## BBXB (Oct 7, 2012)

SSS is essentially flowerhead? We are getting ripped off over here lol


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## randy (Jan 29, 2012)

BBXB said:


> SSS is essentially flowerhead? We are getting ripped off over here lol


No, those water testing shrimps are very bad in quality. A buck a piece gets you what's paid for. They use these shrimps to test a newly cycled tank before introducing higher end shrimps. The exported shrimps (what we see here) are mostly selected from the average thus what you see available here are usually of a higher quality than those water tester.

We're basically stuck in the middle quality with little access to higher end but we don't usually see the lowest end either.

SSS is NOT flowerhead. SSS grade is those crystal shrimps with no or nearly no marking on the back. Flowerhead sometimes are called SSS+ here in North America, or what they call K14 (see chart). Flowerhead are SSS with the specified head gears. Regular SSS would just be K12. I have not seen many flowerhead available around here, you can probably special order or order from other places to get these. It took me a lot of effort to get the shrimps in the pictures. There isn't a big market for high end or "special grade" crystal shrimps in Canada yet, but that may change as the hobby gets more and more popular. Some day, maybe just some day.


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## bettaforu (Sep 6, 2009)

In Germany the K14 is not a flowerhead but a specifically bred shrimp which ONLY produces what the Germans call a "Smiley face" One red dot followed by a red lip. Here is the picture of what it looks like.

These are extremely hard to come by and I have searched all over to find them, but could only get them in Germany! The ones I have seen in the US are NOT of the same quality and are more like a regular flowerhead.


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## randy (Jan 29, 2012)

Hi Anna, I use this as my guide for Germany grading. The link will take you to the English translation.

http://translate.google.com/translate?langpair=de|en&twu=1&u=http://crystal-red.de/aussehen.htm


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## bettaforu (Sep 6, 2009)

Yes I saw that one before, but when I asked several breeders about K14's in Germany they told me these were called Smiley Faces, like the one I pictured.

I tried to get them sent over here but the shipping costs were just way over the top.

I just call those straight flowerheads, but its all one and the same really, they are all high end mosuras and very hard to come by these days.


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