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Tips on Successful Shrimp and Mystery Snail Breeding in Nano Tanks?


Chiquarius

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Hello SKFers,

I have recently begun the invertebrate keeping hobby in the past few months. I have not seen too much success with breeding both shrimp and mystery snails, and wanted to get some tips and input.

My tank setups currently is very nano currently. I’m not looking to keep large populations, but wanted to see generational perpetuity and sell any excess offspring. I have two 3.5 gallon tanks. With success, I plan to upgrade this summer to include a 10 gallon tank I have. Both tanks are cycled, planted tanks with sponge filter setup and some fun seashell hideouts. One has 4-6 juvenile blue rilis and 2 mystery snails. The other has 4-5 red cherries, 2 mystery snails, and three dwarf cordyras cats. I know there are both male and female shrimp. There are also some teeny invasive pond snails that I try to pull out when they get in my sights to feed to my assassin snail (in a separate vase). I feed them Aqueon shrimp food and some special snail pellets I made with eggs/eggshell, kale, and zuchinni. I do 30% water changes every other week or so, with RO water remineralized with Shrimp Essentials. I leave an inch or two under the lid to allow the mystery snails to breed. The substrate is also an ideal shrimp product. I adjusted a full spectrum ‘mood’ light from Menards to the level where algae growth was controlled and keep the tank at about 65-68* (home temp). My last water test parameters were last 6.5-6.8 ph, 0-20 nitrates and nitrites, 0-.25 ammonia.

Anyhow, in the course of months I’ve only ever gotten 1-2 shrimp babies and have yet to see a mystery snail clutch. I’ve read varied things about keeping Cory Cats with shrimp (which is why I keep them away from my blue rilis). Is there a chance that the Corys will eat shrimp juveniles?

I know this is not a forum for snails, but I thought perhaps someone out there could help. Could the teeny invasive snails be feasting on an eggs laid by the mystery snails before I ever see them? Why else would they not be laying?

I plan to add cinnamon sticks for the shrimp and a little more hard/plantscaping with more grazing and hiding spaces for shrimp.

Is 3.5 gallons just too small for even a few shrimp or snail babies?

Please let me know if anyone had any ideas to help me see at least some reproduction.

Thanks community.

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48 minutes ago, Chiquarius said:

I have two 3.5 gallon tanks. With success, I plan to upgrade this summer to include a 10 gallon tank I have.

Upgrade now. Larger tanks mean better stability in water parameters.
 

49 minutes ago, Chiquarius said:

some teeny invasive pond snails that I try to pull out

Are you sure they are pond snails and not bladder snails?
 

48 minutes ago, Chiquarius said:

I feed them Aqueon shrimp food

I would recommend an algae/vegetable based diet with a protein food tossed in maybe once a week. Many "algae" pellets aren't actually algae based, so you might want to be careful if you get more food. I honestly haven't heard much about this food.

 

52 minutes ago, Chiquarius said:

I do 30% water changes every other week or so, with RO water remineralized with Shrimp Essentials.

Does this provide GH and/or KH?
 

52 minutes ago, Chiquarius said:

The substrate is also an ideal shrimp product.

What substrate?

 

53 minutes ago, Chiquarius said:

My last water test parameters were last 6.5-6.8 ph, 0-20 nitrates and nitrites, 0-.25 ammonia.

What about GH, KH, TDS and Temp?

 

54 minutes ago, Chiquarius said:

Could the teeny invasive snails be feasting on an eggs laid by the mystery snails before I ever see them?

Considering the size of mystery snail eggs, no, not possible.

 

Where did you get the shrimp from? Do you know the parameters they came from? Adults or juveniles?

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Thanks for the helpful replies.

I haven’t tested GH or KH. I know the purpose of the Shrimp Essentials is for these parameters. I figure adding this to RO water should provide the required water quality. The medium used is Fluval brand and some kind of Japanese volcanic gravel ideal for shrimp. Temperature is really reliant on our home temperatures, but we keep a consistent 65-68 F.

Yes, these snails appear to be bladder snails (hitchhiked from a pond). If they’re not eating mystery snail eggs and are generally controlled, I am hoping that they are harmless.

Diet-wise they really go for the dehydrated veggie-egg cakes I made in addition to the Aqueon pellets. With such a small tank, I don’t feed them often as I don’t want it funk things up.

Let me know your thoughts on the Cory cats. I don’t want them eating up all the offspring.

ill just keep taking care of my babies as best I can. I’ve got my 10-gallon currently setup as a hydroponic seed starting station. So once I get my garden plants outside, most of my aquatic friends will enjoy a new home, maybe big enough to reproduce.

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I would recommend a bigger tank for being stability, that being said, I started off using a 16L, less that 3.5 gallon Nano tank around October 2018 and still using it now, my yellow, red and blue shrimps has had over 9 clutches of berries total and successfully turned into shrimplets, some of the shrimplets also has berries, so I lost count, sinces I have given a lot of shrimps away in the past few months, whiles my CRS in the same tank has berries about a week ago, just seeing if I'm lucky to get shrimplets, its my first CRS with berries.

My tank uses a Fluval Nano plant LED 3.0 light, Fluval C2 HOF, CO2, water cooler, UVC sterilizer light and a air pump, I also put in a indian almond leave which helps with the water and used as food, along with tetra fin flake food and some of these Japanese shrimp pellets that you can get from amazon.

For plants I have two Madagascar lace plant, RRF, extra large duckweed, the floating plants I get continuous supply as they triple the amount in a few weeks, just recently purchased a few miniature water lettuce, as I intend to redo the present setup of the Nano tank. 

BTW I use ADA substrate and normal tap water, but kept in distilled water bottle with tank startup liquid.

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Cool. Thanks. It seems there is some hope in a small tank.

Kim’s, thanks for describing your setup. I think this will help me research and tweak certain factors, which will hopefully help the reproduction.

 

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Next week I will be giving all my shrimps away to a friend to setup my new Nano tank with just red wine, panda and blue bolts.

Right now I use ADA, but a recommend using Black earth premium, as the soil does not break down.

with a Nano tank, be prepared to do lots of top up at water.

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19 hours ago, Chiquarius said:

I haven’t tested GH or KH. I know the purpose of the Shrimp Essentials is for these parameters. I figure adding this to RO water should provide the required water quality.

Yes, but you don't know if you are adding enough or too much of the shrimp essentials, let alone if it's even the right product you need for RO water... Neos do best with around 7 GH and up for most people. Not many can successfully keep them in a tank with GH below 6.

So without knowing those, it's hard to say if you are even giving your shrimp the right parameters.

 

19 hours ago, Chiquarius said:

Let me know your thoughts on the Cory cats. I don’t want them eating up all the offspring.

I don't believe that pygmy cory's would be an issue in a good setup. I do have some myself, but they are in a community tank without shrimp. They really aren't known for hunting shrimp, but it may still be possible for them to suck up a baby or two.

 

Tap water should not be used on a buffering substrate.

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I don't put tap water direct into the shrimp tank, I keep it in a 5L container with dechlorinated remover a few days before use, I think the brand is sera and another one from zoomed.

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Hello again.

I have good news to report, I have spotted a handful of tiny red cherry shrimp! We will see if they get to adulthood with the Corys in there. I’m willing to wager some shrimp lives to test out Cory cohabitation.

In follow up to other replies, I am pretty measured about the Shrimp Essentials, I add the 5 mL to each gallon of RO water or decorinated tap water that I add (which is every other change). However, I agree it would be a good idea to test GH and KH since there are clearly some tap water minerals getting in there.

Now the mystery snails,  that’s still a mystery. I’ve thought about putting a piece of driftwood extending above he waterline. Perhaps they would be more content laying there than in the sides of the tank.

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The way I see it, the cory won't attack the shrimplets, but their movement may affect the shrimps, I have some moonlight tetra, which grows over an inch, I have never see them attack new born shrimplets, but they like to swim and dash everywhere fast, which scares the shrimps and force them to jump everywhere.

I think its best to keep a tank shrimps only, shrimps product next to nothing in waste when compare to fish, with shrimps you can feed every 2-3 days, where you have to feed fish everyday.

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Hello,

I’ve got shrimplets and no shrimp or snail deaths. 

I was finally able test the GH and KH of my tanks. I also researched the ideal parameters for mystery snails. Unfortunately, there seems to be little overlap in their ideal parameters, but I’ve definitely heard if others keeping both.

My current pH between tanks is 6.5 and 7. KH 7 and 10. And GH 10 in both, respectively.

I brought it there’s from a slightly lower pH and too low of a GH + KH. I’ve used tiny amounts of baking soda, I’m talking 1/16 tspn.in addition to drops of shrimp Essentials.

I want to raise the pH up to 7.6, but not mess with GH/KH anymore. What can I add that will have that’s affect?

Also the mystery snails call for KH of 12, which is way higher than what’s recommended for shrimp. Has anyone had success with shrimp at a KH higher than 5 (I’m already in that territory)?

 

 

 

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