Cherry shrimp, nerite snail, java moss, and free ramshorn snail,

[dragon14]

We have decided to use our 10g tank to breed cherry shrimp in. We bought 6 of them today... cute little buggars.

We also bought some java moss for them. They had none for sale, so they took some out of one of their display tanks. Hubby read that rinsing with really cold water can kill snail eggs, so he did that.

The moss still came with at least 1 free snail, he's pretty sure it is a Ramshorn snail. He said from what he has read, they breed like crazy, and then he also mentioned something about a flatworm parasite or something that can be transmitted to fish and humans... so that scared the crap out of me...

Whatever this snail is, he moves really quickly. He even hung out on top of our nerite snail...

We also bought a Nerite snail late last week to hang out with our Male Betta who is quite timid, but, he was mean to the snail, so we took him out and floated him in a cup in the tank (changed the water daily) until last night when he was put into the 10g tank.

So my questions are:

• Are cherry shrimp ok with snails in general?
• Are ramshorns nice to nerite snails?
• What fish may be compatible with cherry shrimp AND a snail? (We may want to add a few fish to this tank later).
• Are Ramshorn snails really annoying? I'd feel so bad just killing them, but, I don't want them to overtake the tank, and I don't want parasites.
• Does anyone know anything about this parasite thing? That scares the crap out of me.
  • I've tried looking this up, but, no luck on the parasite front really, except for this website: FAQ - Inkie's Ramshorns
    
  http://www3.sympatico.ca/drosera1/fish/worms.htm
  
  

Thanks so much

 

[Angela1108]

Because of the cherry shrimp you would want to look at very small nano fish. Even my guppies eat the baby shrimp. The dwarf rasboras, celestial pearl danios, furcata rainbows, ember tetras, dwarf Amber barbs and dwarf pencil fish are good ones to start researching.


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[dragon14]

Thanks Angela!

We were actually planning to feed some (not all) of the baby shrimplettes to our betta fish once we had a healthy population going (I hope that doesn't sound horrible!) but we definitely don't want fish in-tank to be munching on them! Thank you for the fish recommendations!

Edit: aaaandddd one just died grr.

 

[dragon14]

We put the "free snail" into our female bettas tank to see what would happen...

We don't want our new cherry shrimp tank to get overrun with snail eggs... or snails.

 

[dragon14]

Well, we've lost 3 of our cherry shrimp.... Poor little critters.


What a disaster We've had nothing but success with our Amanos.

 

[Angela1108]

How did you acclimate them? They ca. Be sensitive sometimes. And have you ever treated that tank with copper?


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[IllusionX]

If you want your shrimps, I wouldn't put anything else than otocinclus.

Snails don't thrive if they don't have food. So as long as you don't overfeed, you wouldn't have an excessive amount of snails.

This is what is happening with my shrimp 10g tank. Adjusted my feeding habits and I haven't seen nearly as much snails since.

 

[Rob_pr]

I agree with IllusionX, It's been my experience that if you want to breed a good amount of RCS then it's best to leave fish out of the picture, even my Celestial Pearl Danios where munching on my tank's shrimplets. (even though I provided places to hide) I keep the shrimplets in a 5 gal until they are large enough to survive in the community tank. As far as your recent loss of shrimp, I wondered the same questions as Angela1108.

 

[dragon14]

No copper.

Floated, added water from tank, put in tank about an hour after bringing home.

We now have two cherry shrimp. Out of six.

One climbed out, hubby found it this morning, between the 5g betta tank and the 10g the shrimp and the nerite snail are in. So sad . The rest died.

We now have two shrimp left. Hopefully opposite sexes.

What a disaster. And loss of little lives. . And not to mention a loss of money.

The "bonus snail" is in tank w our female betta, cleaning up algae and leaving a trail of popp behind.

 

[IllusionX]

How old is your tank? Just wondering if it is properly cycled.
What are your water parameters?
Sounds like you 10g is bare bottom, am I correct?

 

[dragon14]

How old is your tank? Just wondering if it is properly cycled.
What are your water parameters?
Sounds like you 10g is bare bottom, am I correct?

Just 1 shrimp left now, I think.

It is not cycled, but we were going to put the filter from our old filter into the 10g's filter (right now it is circulating water, sans filter) once it seeded our new filter we bought for the 20g. (we bought a 40-60g rated filter for our 20g tank).

The water was fresh, brand new on Tuesday when we bought the shrimp. The snail was in there maybe 4 hrs. Just shrimp in there after that.

Didn't test it yet, but I assume the water was fine.

It has gravel in it.

 

[IllusionX]

Well, there you go. You don't just put shrimps in a brand new tank.

You should have waited for your new filter to seed and then take the filter and water from your 20g so you don't need to cycle your 10g.

 

[Angela1108]

Yeah. Shrimp need to go in a cycled tank and preferably one that already has biofilm built up


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[Angela1108]

That also explains the climbing- the one climbing out was probably climbing to find better water/get away from ammonia


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[dragon14]

Oh no. I didn't realize this would happen....

So basically being a fresh new tank with new water is what killed the shrimp? There was some algea (it had been dried though since the tank wasn't used for about a month until now) still on the walls.

What a sad and costly mistake.

We put amano shrimp though into a brand new tank (although it was cycled instantly because of our filters and substrate and decor) when we went from our 10g to 20g. And originally when we got 2 shrimp in our 10g originally, it was only cycled for 5 months.

 

[Angela1108]

Yeah. I would read up on cycling a tank. Inverts are even more sensitive than fish so you shouldn't even try "fish in" cycling with them because they are so sensitive to ammonia and need a really stable environment


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[dragon14]

I know about cycling We had great success cycling our first 10g tank last year in June.

We thought it would be fine to put the shrimp in the 10g (it was left out to dry after we moved everyone to our current 20g tank) since it was just shrimp in there and they have a really low bioload. It's only been 4 days since we got them.

We were planning on having it be cycled via a couple-month-old filter cartridge to be put into the filter we have in there now. The filter is circulating water, but the cartridge is not in there yet as I said.

So it being not cycled is likely the reason they died then eh?

We've had nothing but good luck with our amanos. We did have 1 crawl out, but we've not lost one other than that. We started with 2 in our 10g when it was 5 months old, then got 2 more 1-3 months later, 1 crawled out, and when we moved the 10g to the 20g, we got two more. We got one to "replace" the one that crawled out sometime between it crawling out and upgrading to the 20g tank. We have 6 total now.

Like I said, we put the first two in when the tank was only 5 months old (had algea though!), and the last two when the 20g was brand new, although it was cycled because we transferred everything; sand, decor, and filters.

 

[dragon14]

I wonder if it would be ok to put our last cherry shrimp in our 20g tank. There are hiding spots.

we have:
2 panda cories
7 pygmy cories
6 harlequin rasboras
1 male guppy
1 bn pleco (adolescent)
6 amano shrimp (5 are bigger, and 1 is on the small side, but still bigger than the cherry)

We were told by the LFS that amanos would snack on the cherries when we wanted to get some to put in our 20g tank originally.

The remaining shrimp is very red and very active.

 

[dragon14]

He's (she's?) in! Doing good so far.

I am so sad that the rest died due to us not knowing any better Lesson learned

 

[IllusionX]

Cory Doras are harmless to adults as far as I have experienced but they will eat the baby shrimps.

I don't think Amanos will eat your cherries, probably only the babies. I keep them in the same tank, but it's rather large (65g).

Anyhow, your last cherry shrimp will have better chances surviving in your 20g than your uncycled 10g.

All your fishes will eat baby shrimps or attack the adults, so i would get hiding spots for them such as Java moss.

Also, I'm not sure you should keep a pleco in your tank. They get aggressive adult and produces more waste than "cleaning".