Invertebrates do work in a planted tank that no fish will do — they graze biofilm and algae off leaves, hardscape and glass, and a colony that breeds on its own is the clearest sign your water is genuinely stable. We keep inverts at both San Diego stores, with new shipments most weeks.
Neocaridina or Caridina? Decide this first
It is the choice that determines everything else. Neocaridina — cherry, blue dream, snowball, black rose — are the hardy ones. They do well in hard, alkaline water straight out of the San Diego tap, breed readily, and forgive the mistakes everybody makes early on. Start here. Caridina — crystal red, taiwan bee, king kong — want soft, acidic water with low TDS, which here means RO water and an active buffering substrate. They are stunning and they are unforgiving. Do not keep the two together: their water requirements pull in opposite directions, and they can interbreed into muddy, unsellable offspring.
Copper is what kills them
Invertebrates are far more sensitive to copper than fish, and copper turns up in more places than people expect — most general-purpose fish medications, several algae treatments, and some plant fertilizers. Read the label on anything you dose. If a product does not explicitly say it is invertebrate-safe, move the fish to a separate tank and treat them there.
Acclimate slower than you think you need to
Shrimp handle a sudden change in water chemistry far worse than fish do, and the damage often does not show for a day or two. Drip acclimate over an hour or more rather than floating a bag for fifteen minutes. This matters most when the water you are moving them from and the water you are moving them into have different TDS, which is almost always the case.
Snails are not the problem
Nerites will not breed in freshwater, so they will never overrun a tank. Mystery snails are peaceful and large enough to be a feature rather than a nuisance. If you have a genuine pest snail explosion, the snails are a symptom — you are overfeeding, and they are living on what your fish did not eat. Fix the feeding and the population falls on its own.
