Start with what can harm shrimp from across the room
Brief a house sitter on emergency care for cherry shrimp by beginning outside the tank, because the gravest risks to a shrimp colony arrive through the air and on hands. Aerosol sprays, fly killers, scented candles burned close by and freshly polished furniture near the aquarium can all reach the water, and cherry shrimp have almost no tolerance for that chemistry. A sitter who would never mishandle a fish can still endanger shrimp with a routine wipe of the cabinet, so this section of the brief is the one to say twice.
Teach the sitter what a healthy colony looks like
Normal behaviour is the sitter's measuring stick for cherry shrimp, because emergencies in a colony are read as a change in the crowd rather than in one animal. Show them your colony on an ordinary evening: shrimp spread across the moss, wood and glass, grazing with constant little hand movements, a berried female fanning eggs under her tail, and a few papery white moults left on the plants. Explain the moult clearly, since a sitter who mistakes a cast shell for a dead shrimp may start fishing around in the tank and reporting losses nightly. A dead shrimp, by contrast, turns opaque pinkish-white and lies still on its side.
Lock down water, intake and hands-off maintenance
Water rules in a cherry shrimp brief are strict because shrimp live inside small, stable water and feel every swing at full strength. The sitter adds only your labelled, prepared water, poured in slowly for top-ups, and performs no water change beyond the one small, demonstrated task if you scheduled it, using that container and no other. The sponge sleeve over the filter intake never comes off, since baby shrimp graze on it and are drawn in without it. Nothing is scrubbed, no plant is pruned, no gravel is vacuumed on a sitter's watch; algae on the back glass is the colony's pantry, not dirt. If the filter stops, the sitter checks the plug, keeps the media damp in tank water and calls you, rather than rinsing anything clean under a tap.
Measure food in pinches and expect leftovers to matter
Feeding cherry shrimp under a sitter is an exercise in smallness, because a colony needs far less than a kind visitor assumes and pays for every surplus in fouled water. No feeding at all is the instruction if a pot is missed or doubled by confusion; cherry shrimp graze biofilm constantly and a hungry day harms them far less than a decaying banquet. The sitter should also know that swarming eagerly over fresh food is the colony's best nightly health check.
Define the one picture that means emergency
Emergency recognition for cherry shrimp comes down to one picture, so describe it vividly for the sitter and put it at the top of the call list. Shrimp gathered at the surface or along the waterline, many sitting motionless together, or shrimp darting repeatedly and then lying still means the water has turned against them and earns an immediate call to you, day or night, with nothing added to or taken from the tank until you answer. Several dead shrimp found together, a milky cloudiness to the water or a chemical smell near the tank join that same immediate list. Your number, then an aquatic shop or veterinarian familiar with invertebrates, goes on the card. In shrimp keeping the first hour decides a colony's fate, so the brief should make phoning early feel like doing the job well.
Give the colony rules a single home
Cherry shrimp care is a cluster of small prohibitions that no sitter holds in memory from one conversation, so the no-spray rule, the labelled water, the pinches and the emergency picture belong together in one handover. Through a Care Pass on KinsLe, the colony's spray ban, slow top-up method and motionless-cluster warning remain one glance away during every evening visit of your trip.