Tiny Shrimp Diaphonised Specimen

These gorgeous little freshwater shrimp have come up spectacularly!

They’ve been a little bit of a challenge - clearing the soft tissues inside the exoskeleton has taken precision and care, as the slightest change in solution strength has meant the difference between slowly slowly clearing, and rapidly disintegrating. For this reason they have been prepared in small batches of 4 or 5 at a time to make sure that if something goes wrong it’s not the end of the world!

There is some variation in these shrimp - notably differences in size, but also some slight variation in how well the blue stain took. Most of them have some slight blue tinges to the tips of the swimmerets/pleopods (the little fins underneath the abdomen), and a few have held slightly in the carapace and rostrum. Some have barely held the blue stain at all. But they look pretty dang cool regardless!

Thanks to nature each specimen is unique in colour and attributes, each little quirk is a part of its story.