Non-fishy aquarium dwellers

[totalbolshevik]

I am wondering about some good non-fish inhabitants for aquariums. I tried keeping a ghost shrimp once but that didn't really work out. I know that people feed ghost shrimp to their larger fish. I'm a bit new to this fish business, so please excuse me if I sound like an idiot.

 

[Jamnog]

shrimps are good if they are small
they clean the bottom and they are cool to watch i was gonna get some the other day but got a bigger tank instead. allot of people dissagree with me when i suggest snails as a non fish inhabitant.
now snails: they clean the alge off the side look pretty cool going all over the place but some speicies will decimate your plants most just nibble. some people will tell you that snails can carry parasites for that my answer is yes so can any living thing i would say that most of them dont ive never had a case of a snail passing anything on and i would quarrantine the snail first but thats not allthe main reason people dont like snails is because they cant controll them once they are in the tank thats it they are in the tank and they are hard to get rid off in some comunity tanks . it just so happens that i cant breed snails in any of my tanks because all the fish eat the young snails.so i have to breed them in one tank and release them into the other tank when they get big enough to survive. in the tank i breed them in its clear to see that the young can speckal the sides a bit but in said tank the alge is allmost non existant. i recomend snails to keep the alge down after reading the pros and cons you can make your own desitcions

 

[playfulalliecat]

My only problem with snails is that you can end up with an overwhelming population of them seemingly overnight and as they emit waste just as fish, you end up wasting fish space in the tank for snails. If you like snails anyway that's ok, but I prefer to watch my fish swimming around over watching snails creep along cleaning the glass and stuff. Any living creature in a tank creates waste of some kind so you still have to watch out for it!

JMHO
Allie

 

[Pufferpack]

We also use a Snail as clean up crew in a couple of our tanks, but only 1 per tank to try and prevent breeding. I have bout Apple and Ramshorn snails and both seem to do a great job of clean up. Evil Kinevil is our daredevil snail in the community tank and he is so active, one of the most fun to watch, all the fish fight with him for the algae pellets at feeding time....he usually wins
If you are looking for a totally non-fish aquariun try crayfish or crabs (both together may fight) as well as ghost or Cherry shrimp and 1 big snail, maybe some aquatic frogs.

 

[BIANCA]

I would suggest snails. Apple snails are in almost every petstore or you can buy the really nice blue, ivory, and yellow ones online. You can put as many snails as you want to in your tank, if youre worried about breeding thats EASY....apple snails lay their eggs above water, they are quite easy to spot, so you dont want more snails just flush the eggs plain and simple. They take about 2-3 weeks to hatch so you need only check once a week or so.
There are also a wide variety of smaller shrimps (ghost, red crystal, etc) I would stick with the SMALL ones versus the large ones - or even crayfish- in a tank with fish in it, because the larger ones can and will eat slower fish.
You can also buy aquatic frogs. The african dwarf frogs stay small and are definately funny to watch.