Do these things eat pond snails?

[tolstoy21]

Do clown plecos or kuhli loaches eat pond snails?

I ask because my shrimp tank is full of them to an annoying degree, and they live in the sump on my 125. But the display main 125 itself has almost none.

I was hoping to get some pink ramshorns populating in the 125 to clean the anubias, but now I'm wondering if something in the tank snacks on the young RHS before they grow.

Thoughts?

[Taylor Blake]

I think kuhli loaches will eat the eggs of the snails but as for the actual snails I don't think so. As for a snail eater that will live with shrimp I think you are out of luck. The most common reason to have too many snails in a tank is because of over feeding the tank. If I were you I would start manually removing snails when you do water changes and feed that tank less.

[tolstoy21]

22 minutes ago, Taylor Blake said:

As for a snail eater that will live with shrimp I think you are out of luck. The most common reason to have too many snails in a tank is because of over feeding the tank. If I were you I would start manually removing snails when you do water changes and feed that tank less.

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not worried about getting rid of them, just trying to grow the population a tad in my larger tank.

I did a weeks worth of daily, manual removal in the shrimp tank and then decreased the feeding a bit and that's all under control. Honestly, I think the use of Mineral Junkie caused my spike (probably feeding too much of that) because before that, their numbers were low and they didn't do well in the low Ph of the tank. I'm going to guess the addition of excess calcium and other minerals that they could scavenge helped them thrive, whereas before that they were barely getting a foothold.

As for the 125, something must be feeding on them because there is plenty for them to eat and thrive on in that tank.

Edited October 1, 2020 by tolstoy21

[Taylor Blake]

Got it I miss understood. I would say things are probably eating the eggs more then the snails themselves. what else Do you have in the 125?

[Brandy]

I had a population explosion of RHS, pond snails, and mini RHS in my tank when I first set it up. then I got khuli's and now all snails are above a certain size and the population has stabilized...I definitely think the khulis are eating eggs and babies.

I think it would be easy to grow out some tho-- put some cucumber in a jar with a few adult snails and a few floating plants, leave the adults until the jar is filled with egg sacs, return adults to the tank and leave the jar in a window to get green...babies should arrive, and make it past the size threshold, at which point they can go in the big tank.

[Leo2o915]

1 minute ago, Brandy said:

I had a population explosion of RHS, pond snails, and mini RHS in my tank when I first set it up. then I got khuli's and now all snails are above a certain size and the population has stabilized...I definitely think the khulis are eating eggs and babies.

I think it would be easy to grow out some tho-- put some cucumber in a jar with a few adult snails and a few floating plants, leave the adults until the jar is filled with egg sacs, return adults to the tank and leave the jar in a window to get green...babies should arrive, and make it past the size threshold, at which point they can go in the big tank.

Would the kuhli loach eat the shrimp?

[Brandy]

14 minutes ago, Leo2o915 said:

Would the kuhli loach eat the shrimp?

Probably not adults. Babies? probably. I have amanos and one adult RCS in with 3 khulis in a 29g. They are left alone, but I have not tried to get the shrimp to breed there.