Calico Sunkist Neocaridina Shrimp

Calico Sunkist Neocaridina Shrimp (Neocaridina davidi) is a striking multi-colored variant of the Sunkist line — a Neocaridina developed for warm orange pigmentation. Where the standard Sunkist displays a solid or near-solid orange body, the Calico Sunkist shows an irregular patchwork of orange, white, and sometimes yellow across the body — a mottled or marbled effect that makes each individual shrimp visually unique. The "calico" descriptor refers to this irregular, multi-toned patterning, borrowed from the same term used in calico cats and calico platies.

The Sunkist line gets its name from the vivid orange color reminiscent of the citrus brand — a warm, saturated orange quite distinct from the cooler or redder tones of Cherry or Fire Red Neocaridina. The Calico Sunkist carries this warm orange base color but with the added visual interest of irregular white patterning that breaks up the solid orange in unpredictable ways. No two Calico Sunkist shrimp look exactly alike.

All Neocaridina davidi color varieties are color-selected lines of a single species native to Taiwan. Decades of selective breeding by Taiwanese hobbyists have produced an extraordinary range of colors — when you keep a Neocaridina shrimp, you are keeping one of the most extensively domesticated freshwater invertebrates in the world.

A note on mixing colors: Neocaridina color varieties will interbreed freely. Subsequent generations of crosses revert toward the ancestral wild-type — a muddy brown-olive. Keep each color variety in its own aquarium to maintain color quality.