A few questions about snails, shrimp, and anacharis

[jdizzle3id]

I have a 75 gal with 6 bala sharks, 4 yoyo loaches, 1 "rubberlip pleco", and a 7-8 inch african cichlid. The cichlid will be finding a new home as soon as I find a responsible owner who will take him/her(it was a "gift" from a friend who didn't want it anymore). I realize I am overstocked for full grown balas but mine are about 3-4 inches and I will be upgrading to a significantly larger tank before the end of the year (200 for sure, 300 wife permitting). I was thinking of doing some changes this summer since I have about two months of time on my hands and nothing to do.

Here are my ideas:
1) I was thinking of adding some mystery snails, but I'm not sure if the fish will eat or destroy them.
2) I was thinking of adding some ghost shrimp and basically seeing what would happen. I figure either the fish will eat them or they won't and either way it's fine with me (either I'm varying their diet or I'm adding something to the tank).
3) I could add some anacharis plants to the tank and half hope for a small snail population that the yoyo loaches could snack on. I'm not really set up for the plants but anacharis is cheap, has low light requirements, and if the pleco would snack on it, I wouldn't be too devistated.

Basically I'm wondering.
1) If quarantine procedures would be required in any of these situations.
2) If you think these are bad ideas for whatever reason.

Please let me know what your thoughts are.

P.S. I do keep a regular cleaning schedule; twice weekly 15-20% PWCs. And I feed a mixture of freeze dried blood worms, flake food, cichlid pellets, shrimp pellets, algae wafers, and whatever veggies I happen to have in the fridge.

 

[Purrbox]

In general mixing loaches and inverts is a bad idea. If you don't care whether or not the inverts get eaten, then go ahead and give it a try. I'd probably only start with one snail or half a dozen ghost shrimp to see how it goes before adding any more. With the snails you'll want to be careful which variety you buy as some that are sold under the name mystery snail are plant eaters while others are perfectly plant safe. Applesnail.net is a great resource for IDing snails.

Some even better plants for your aquarium if it has standard lighting would be Anubias, Java Fern, Java Moss, or perhaps some common Crypts. These are even less light demanding than the Anacharis.

Technically you should quarentine any living thing before adding it to an aquarium. I know of very few that actually quarentine plants unless they are wild collected. At most they are treated with a dip and given a good rinse before adding. I don't know of anyone that actually quarentines mystery/apple snails or ghost shrimp either.

 

[CatatonicBug]

I would expect the ghost shrimp to last about 5-10 miutes in a tank with a cichlid that size. The snails would probably be safe from the cichlid, but I don't know about the loaches at all. The tiny snails that might hitch a ride on the plants would probably last as long as the shrimp too though.

 

[JohnPaul]

The ghost shrimp would be a waste. Either they will get eaten within minutes (the most likely scenario) or else if you have a heavily planted tank with lots of good hiding places, they will simply find a hiding spot and never come out again.

I put some ghost shrimp in a 29 gal community tank I had (with nothing as nearly aggressive as cichlids) and within 30 seconds lost sight of them. Didn't see them for months, assumed they were eaten. Then I had to move and ended up breaking down my tanks and giving away all my fish to a friend, and while breaking the tanks down, low and behold I discovered 2 of my ghost shrimp still alive and well, hiding in a small crack in a piece of my driftwood. I spend a fair amount of time 'watching' my tanks, and in 3+ months I had never seen either of them once.

If you want to try it, though, there is no need to quarantine ghost shrimp, as there are no diseases they carry that are transmissble to fish (or vice-versa).