need suggestion on fish

[mmohamma]

Hi all,

I finished redesigning my 65G tank 2 months ago. It's a heavily planted tank with Ludwigia, Hydrocotyle, and Cabomba. I moved the original residence back in which is a school of 14 Rummy rose tetra and 6 glow rasboras.

Recently I got 8 shrimps (velvet blue and Red Rili) to do the clean up. They were all approximately 3/4" long and and rummy nose tetras decided to quickly turn turn into a very expensive dinner.

Another problem that I have is an infestation of snails from all the plants.

I love shrimps because they do such a great job of cleaning up the tank of algae, and honestly I thought rummy nose tetras are shrimp safe. Should I try larger ones?

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can solve these 2 problems?

-maz

 

[SaraB]

Your pest snail infestation will actually help clean your tank. If you wanted to get rid of them then I suggest assassin snails. They are a great chemical free way of killing pests. A longer solution to your problem would be putting kale or a cucumber in and waiting til the pests attach themselves and removing it from the tank.
You could try amano shrimp as they are larger and not very colorful. But don't get them if you are going the assassin snail route as they might kill the shrimp as well.

 

[mmohamma]

Do Assassin snails help with dead material at the bottom of the tank and reduce the algae or they only hunt snails?

 

[mmohamma]

Do they help reduce the dead material or left over food at the bottom of the tank as well? or they hunt snails only? Also do they multiple like other snails? should I get 1 or 2 or larger number for my 65G tank.

 

[SaraB]

Assassins are hunt snails only. A pack of them can take down larger snails like mystery snails. I had 1 in my 20 gallon and had to sell it because I ran out of baby pest snails for it to eat. For a 65 maybe 3-4.
You could get a school of otocinclus, or oto cats as they are sometimes called. They are the best algae eating fish.