Babies..

[syhko]

Hello, I am back! I haven’t been here in awhile because we gave away our pregnant mollies. They were hard to take care of and I was crying when I thought they were stressed.. so instead we got a tank with shrimp and snails!

We started with 2 shrimp and 2 snails.. and they both had babies. Yeah, they produce quickly. Right now there are more eggs after so many of them hatched! It’s becoming very overpopulated for our 5 gallon tank. We have it with sand.. but it’s getting really messy right now and we need to clean the sand but we have so many baby snails and snail eggs are currently on the walls of the aquarium. What do I do? I really don’t want to have the snails to reproduce a lot and I don’t want to get something that’s going to eat the shrimp or baby snails.


Help!! What do I do? I’m relatively new but I have owned these precious guys for more than a month now. I’ve had aquariums for 4-5 months but it’s different with these dudes. I don’t want to stress any of them out and I need to stop the overpopulation.

 

[Jacky12]

I picked up nasty pest snails eggs at the LFS. On plants. Very difficult to control. I stick my paw in the contaminated tanks & toss them into the trash can. I tried assassin snails, but the bad guys reproduce too fast

 

[ADsnail]

That would depend on what you want! Do you want a 5g with a couple shrimp and snails? Or could you be happy with a 20g or larger that features more of each?

I'm guessing these are mystery snails that reproduced? If so, they will keep laying egg pods, possibly twice a week, so if you don't want even more you'll need to inspect under the lid and top rim and above the water line every morning, as that's where they lay them. And remove them (wipe away with a paper towel). If you decide to move up to a bigger tank you'll still have to deal with the offspring of two snails in love, so whether you stay small or move up a decision will need to be made as to whether to keep dealing or break up the happy couple and have only one mystery to a tank. I've had this situation many times and FYI, the eat-poop-mate-egg cycle becomes constant and makes for a very messy situation. Ah, love...

You'll probably receive advice here about how to round up and dispose of the extra snails. Having dealt with this myself I can say that all the advice will be good, so choose which appeals to you. An alternative, if you don't want to hurt anyone, is to round them up and take them to your local small-owner fish store and offer them for free. It will help to tell them who the parents are (gold mystery snail + blue mystery, for example) so they know what they're getting.

As to shrimp, if you're enjoying them, what's not to love? They'll need a bigger space but it's so worth it for their cute antics. Even a 20g will house lots of the little fellas, and will give you room to add things that make life wonderful for them, like lotus pods. They live in them, raise babies in them, and eat them! Imagine being able to eat your apartment building and when it's gone, someone replaces it!

So here's an example: I have a 20g with one mystery snail and dozens of shrimp. The shrimp reproduce and use the mystery snail shell as a place to deposit eggs, get piggyback rides; they also use her as a nanny, diving beneath her when they feel threatened like at water changing time. It's a happy situation for all concerned. Sounds like you already have a happy scene going on there, so...choices. I think whatever course you choose, you'll make a happy home for them. Good luck.

 

[Colin_T]

Pictures of the snails so we know what species they are.

Some snails are a pest, while others are actually worth something. Mystery and assassin snails are worth something at pet shops. Most other snails are considered pests and nobody wants them.

If you have clusters of jelly eggs from snails, you can scrape the eggs off and throw them in the garden.

Mystery snails large clusters of eggs out of water, just above the water line. These eggs are reasonably hard but can be crushed with your fingers. If you have Mystery snails, you can scrape the eggs clusters off the glass and throw them on the garden as well, or grow them up and trade them in for credit at a pet shop. Use the credit for fish food, plants or let it build up and get a bigger tank.

You can reduce the rate that shrimp and snails breed by reducing the food going into the tank, and by reducing the water temperature. If you feed them 2-3 times a week, they will go into survival mode and be less likely to breed. Dropping the water temperature to 18-20C can slow or stop them breeding if they are tropical species. Cold water species need much cooler water to stop them breeding.

 

[ColdKoi]

As with most critters, they will only thrive to the extent their environment allows

Key factor is food source, control that and you control the population. Now, this doesn’t stop them from trying, but you can greatly impact the survival rate of the young by limiting the food available to them in the tank

Depending what you have for snails, like mentioned they may not be worth anything especially if it’s a ‘pest’ type like a pond or bladder snail. These guys can explode in population if the environment allows, but they will eventually decline in numbers as they deplete the food source.

I have bladder snails in all of my tanks, I’ve actually put them in tanks on purpose. When I first got them in my 75 I was leery as they were multiplying pretty fast, but as the tank matured (it was still fairly new then) their numbers dropped and within a couple months they had completely disappeared from the tank itself and could only be found in the canister filter where they continue to live happily