Snails eating molting shrimp.

[syhko]

If you keep up with my posts.. I have a shrimp and snail tank. It seems like the snails are overpopulating the shrimp.

My two shrimps, Banana and Blueberry, were molting and we found all the baby snails eating them.. or what we think is eating. They are piling on them. The water parameters are fine, but we think it’s getting overpopulated and we need to get a fish or feeder for freshwater that won’t kill shrimp but will eat the pest snails. Do y’all have any suggestions? They are mystery snails and overpopulating bad. We don’t want our shrimp to die because of this. We have a 10 gallon tank we can potentially move them into but it’s inhabited. This is a 5 gallon tank and has over 15 snails, including babies, in there and about 8 shrimp but 8-2.. because the two died.. 6 shrimp left.

Help!

 

[Colin_T]

Don't buy fish to try and control a problem in the tank. It simply adds to the problems. Find out what is causing the problem and fix it. In this case, snails are breeding too much. Either reduce the food and temperature to slow the snails. Remove the shrimp so they don't get eaten by the snails, or remove the snails.

 

[ADsnail]

You may receive many suggestions here. This is what worked for me:

~Remove all the new snails. Where to put them? Gift them to friends with aquariums or to your LFS. One way to remove them is the old lettuce trick: at night, lay down a leaf of iceberg lettuce, curve up, on the floor of the tank. In the morning it will be filled with snails. Remove the leaf and snails. If you didn't get them all, do it again the next night.

~Separate the parents: put one in the 10g and leave one where it is. If not, they will keep reproducing at a rapid rate

~That means you'll have your shrimp colony plus one snail in the 5g, which is a good amount of living things in a small tank

Search for egg clusters at the top of the tank around the rim, above the water. They lay eggs at night, sometimes twice a week. When new, they're soft and mushy. At 2-3 days old it has an outer crust. The older the cluster, the harder it is. If left alone they hatch in a few weeks, giving you 50-100 snails from each cluster.

FYI, even after snails are separated the female will continue reproducing eggs for awhile, so keep looking. One of mine kept producing egg clusters for up to 6 weeks after I removed the other mystery snail.