Shrimps and Snails

[ksteady]

Ok... Waiting on my stand and hood to finally arive for my new adventures into a planted tank setup. This will be my first time into a planted tank, only having done a generic "fish store" type setup twice in the past sereral years ago. Tank is going to be 90 gal running co2 and 216 watts of t5 lighting. I hope so far I am on the right track.

Anyways this last week waiting for my gear to get here has involved me sitting in front of my computer or endless hours reading this site and increasing my knowledge as much as I can. I understand that Shrimp and Snail eat algae and some look pretty rad. My question is this.... Anyone have a link to in depth info into these little guys.... Looking for something that give me info as to how many I need for a tank my size, life expectancy in this type of setup and type of fish that will eat them. Also looking for pictures of different types of them. Was really into Pleco's on my old setup, the more interesting looking the better. The Red Cherry Shrimp seems to be a popular choice here. not finding much about snails though.

Seen a few posts refering to a shrimp/snail tanks people run on the side.... They do this just for babes ?

 

[travis simonson]

It sounds like you've done a great job of selecting hardware for your planted tank. Your lighting and CO2 supplementation should allow you to grow just about anything you're interested in keeping.

Two great resources for dwarf aquarium shrimp are Petshrimp.com and ShrimpFanatics.com. Arizona Aquatic Gardens also has good information and is an excellent shrimp retailer if you're not going to be purchasing the shrimp locally or from another hobbyist. Dwarf shrimp are almost all good algae eaters but the Amano shrimp (Caridina japonica) is easily the best cleaner shrimp I've kept. They get larger than most of the other types and will not reproduce successfully in fresh water.

As far as snails go I have had great luck with nerite snails and Malaysian trumpet snails (MTS) in my planted tanks. Some types of ramshorn snails are also good. You want to avoid apple/mystery snails and any type of pond snails as they can potentially damage or destroy your plants. And again Arizona Aquatic Gardens is a great online source for information and retail sales of snails for planted tanks.

Hope this helps

 

[JustOneMore20]

The reason you see people with just shrimp tanks is because almost all fish will eat shrimp (or atleast shrimplets) so many people just have species tanks (or mixed shrimp tanks).

Shrimp are interesting critters. I have one shrimp tank and plan on another.

 

[ksteady]

Thanks for the info guys. The AAQ website is really awesome. It's perfect except only ships to US for live products. I need a site like this for Canadian shipments if anyone knows. I can order plants from AAQ but I want to be able to order Shrimp/Snails as well. Where I live in Edmonton, Alberta I have very very few choices to get fish and such. Really I have 1 store that brings in semi rare stuff. Any help would be great..