Predators for Culling

[Jmhowe09]

Hello,

 

I am breeding cherry shrimp, mystery snails, and a few guppy strains. I have found the need to start culling and am looking for advice on what predators would be a good fit for this. 

 

I currently have a 55 gallon that could house the predator. I was thinking possibly one Oscar, but have also heard that they can be timid/shy and not necessarily the best predator to eat my culls. It also appears that a 55 may not be a long-term solution for an Oscar. 

 

Looking for some recommendations on a predator fish for guppies, snails, and cherry shrimp that would fit in a 55 gallon. Bonus points if it lets me keep the tank planted. 

[gardenman]

An Oscar is a good choice until you get to the "lets me keep the tank planted " part. They're very fond of redecorating their tanks. They're a very smart fish who gets bored and decides to rearrange things to ease the boredom. That may involve moving all of the substrate to the other side of the tank, uprooting plants, etc.

Maybe a combo of something like a rope fish (largely bottom dwelling nocturnal predator) and an angelfish would do the job for you. A large angelfish kept on the peckish side can handle small/medium guppy fry and shrimp. The rope fish will prey on anything it can. I'm not sure about snails, but a smaller puffer might be added also.

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

I'd just get whatever species you want to enjoy. Most things eat shrimp and guppy fry if they are hungry. Snail culls are more of a puffer or loach specialty unless you crush them before feeding. If you do that its just food and will be eaten by nearly everyone. That can also be added to repashy if you feed that type of food for a bit of variety. 

In my limited experience anything that eats snails is probably rooting or blowing around the roots of plants and would make it a challenge to keep plants in the substrate unless planters or medium sized rocks were used to prevent easy uprooting. 

I use a colony of Tetraodon Miurus for that purpose. I would imagine an "ambush" puffer would do the job you are looking at if you are a puffer person. My semi educated guess based of my puffer groups is that Pao cf palustris, amazons, spotted congos, pea puffers, and red eyes would be less inclined to hunt the guppies actively unless sufficiently hungry to put out that effort. I could be wrong there though mine are fairly content to be fed or hunt slower prey like shrimp and snails. 

 

[Scot]

Are you ready to keep your predator well fed when you don't have enough culls? Feeding predators _can_ get expensive.

[AndEEss]

I imagine any medium sized tetra group will suffice for your guppy culls and a small/medium loach group would do it for your snails and shrimp.

I've tried to get a ghost/grass shrimp colony going in my heavily planted 75g but even my youngest (2") yoyo loach will eat the adults alive.

[Cinnebuns]

My recommendation wouldn't be in a 55 gallon. Many people do a betta for this reason for guppies. They probably wouldn't eat the snails tho. Also, personalities vary so much with bettas that some actually completely ignore fry. For this reason, if you did a betta, I would recommend trying to get an aggressive one. 

[tolstoy21]

Pretty much everything will eat shrimp, other than the smallest nano fish.  As for guppies, Oscars would work, but they get big and poop like Labrador Retrievers. 

[AndEEss]

Also, yoyo loaches (and I’d imagine many other Botias) will keep Corydoras populations in check by eating their eggs.

[anitstuk]

You could house one Green Terror in a 55 gallon and it should prey on just about anything in your tank. 

[Goosedub]

I would do an angel. My angels eat everything, including guppy fry

[Greenthumb]

I use a couple/three bluefin killifish (Lucania goodei) to "turn off" my guppy and livebearer colonies and then pull them out once or twice a year to allow a few females to drop.  Just use all males so they don't spawn.  Voracious little omnivores.  The easiest way to find them is to check the feeder guppy tank at your LFS, they are really common hitchhikers in those shipments.  Their eggs also show up pretty regularly in water plant shipments out of Florida, that's how I got mine.

Golden topminnows will eat pretty much whatever you put in front of them if it will fit in their mouth.  Mine love bladder snails and will happily slurp ramshorn snails out of their shells.  They also eat fry and aren't above sampling algae.

If you were talking larger fish you might look into some of the smaller Lepomis sunfish.

[rockfisher]

African cichlids

[Atitagain]

Electric blue acara, a group of them would fit nicely in a 55G. Mine and what I’ve seen do well in planted tanks. For the snails maybe you get a 5-10G and set up for pea puffers, they may even do well in the 55G with the EBA.

 

[TheSwissAquarist]

Angelfish!

[laritheloud]

Fairly uncommon fish, but I have a pair of Nanochromis Splendens that are exceptional fry hunters. They are smaller fish, though, and you could definitely get something bigger like EBAs or Angelfish for a 55 gallon.

 

[JettsPapa]

You wouldn't need a 55 for them, but female albino koi guppies are relentless fry hunters.  That's been my experience, and I've had other people tell me the same thing.  I've had three of them in a moderate to heavily planted tank with a male for a year or longer.  I've seen one fry . . . and I only saw it once.

[BeeD]

On 8/23/2022 at 7:05 PM, Greenthumb said:

I use a couple/three bluefin killifish (Lucania goodei) to "turn off" my guppy and livebearer colonies

Woh hold up. Can you tell me more? I had a gourami who didn't quite accomplish this. I don't know if that's because it was more interested in newly hatched snails, or if it just wasn't that proficient at catching baby guppies. Do the guppies recognize them specifically as fry eaters and they just delay giving birth?

[Cinnebuns]

Do turtles eat snails?  I think they do. Maybe that would work. Unless fish only. 

On 8/24/2022 at 9:17 PM, BrettD said:

Woh hold up. Can you tell me more? I had a gourami who didn't quite accomplish this. I don't know if that's because it was more interested in newly hatched snails, or if it just wasn't that proficient at catching baby guppies. Do the guppies recognize them specifically as fry eaters and they just delay giving birth?

Yes they do actually. My female hasn't given birth in 8 weeks because I added a powdered blue gourami when she was on week 4. I took it out last night and she instantly gave birth. 

[SimmonsSnailsNScales]

Will platies also hold off on giving birth when they know predators are in the tank? My diamond tetras love baby snacks and it seems like my platies have been prego forever.

[BeeD]

On 8/24/2022 at 11:10 PM, Cinnebuns said:

Yes they do actually. My female hasn't given birth in 8 weeks because I added a powdered blue gourami when she was on week 4. I took it out last night and she instantly gave birth. 

You know what, that makes me think. I had thought that my females were holding back because they were finally hitting the population wall. They dropped a huge number of fry when I moved out all the males and renovated their tank, and I thought it was the population reduction.

But the gold gourami died around that same time. I never felt like it was very successful at catching fry, but I wonder if the pressure was all that mattered.

[Greenthumb]

On 8/24/2022 at 9:17 PM, BrettD said:

Woh hold up. Can you tell me more? I had a gourami who didn't quite accomplish this. I don't know if that's because it was more interested in newly hatched snails, or if it just wasn't that proficient at catching baby guppies. Do the guppies recognize them specifically as fry eaters and they just delay giving birth?

They are just really efficient predators, I use 3 in a 10 gallon colony and 6-7 in a 20 long.

Mine spend most of their time picking at the sponge filter and popping in and out of the hornwort.

They behave and look more like a characin than a killifish.  Small (2" or less), mid-lower water, shoaling, and peaceful (no fin nipping in my experience).  They look like they would have a really small mouth but don't let it fool you, mine will at least attempt to eat anything that is less than the diameter of their eye.

The males are also absolutely stunning when they display.