Somethings Been Gobbling My Snails....

[Killi]

Up until a few days ago I had about 5/6 snails in my tank of various species...now I just have a few empty shells on the bottom. All of them were stowaways anyway, but I like snails and I'm quite sad theyve gone The largest 3 snails were about 1cm long. I also have in my tank (so one of these must be the culprit) :

3 Clown Killifish, but these are only small, about 1-1.5" and have never bothered with them before. The 4th one is missing.
7 Neon Tetras, again these have never bothered with them before.
2 Unknown species of shrimp, i've only had these for about 2 weeks. They are about 1.5" and have been picking at the shells when I come home.

To be honest I wouldn't of thought any of these could of tackled a snail, but I personally think the shrimp are to blame. One of my female Killifish is missing too & I'm worried that my fish are in danger Its weird though because I thought that shrimp only ate algea.

Could it have been the shrimp???

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Can you describe what the shrimp looks like and how big it is? Most shrimp are peaceful scavengers, but you do get some predatory shrimp out there too, so its important to ID to the shrimp.
However the main cause of death in aquariums is either desease or water quality problems or both. Its vital that you definately test your water for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates with an accurate test kit. Have you used any meds or chemicals recently in the tank? What did you feed the snails and shrimp or do you rely on them to scavenge alone?

 

[Killi]

Well I took this picture on my phone of one of them this morning but its not every good (the other one was hiding away so I couldn't snap that one) :



They're clear mostly and this one doesn't have any distinguishing markings. They're about 1.5" in length. One has a yellow what I think is its brain but the other one's is darker. The other one has a very slight pinky/red colour on its back but its hardly visible, & they have small claws.

My water readings are normal & I've changed 20% of the water, twice this week. The only chemicals I've added are the water conditioners when I changed the water. I get a lot of algae growing on my bogwood so I presumed they would munch on that or bits of fishfood they find in the sand, so no I don't bother feeding them anything.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Its not unlikely that they just starved then if you weren't feeding them anything, snails need to be fed just as much as fish do. Your shrimp look like ghost shrimp, perfectly harmless little algae eating/scavenging shrimp;

http/joshmadison.com/aquarium/images/fis...imp-2442-lg.jpg

What test results were you getting exactly? One persons definition of "fine" or "normal" may not be the same as anothers.

 

[Donya]

As mentioned above, the exact water params are needed to know what's going on (temperature, pH, ammonia, etc.). It's also important what species of snail you had, since there are some pretty big differences in environmental requirements between some species. For instance, most Viviparids don't live long in tropical tanks, regardless of food availbility. If you don't know the species, can you get pics of the shells?


(edited for some typos)

 

[Killi]

By normal I meant:

Ph - 6.6
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 10
Water - <3 (soft)
Temperature is approx 24 degrees celcius

The snails just looked like UK pond snails to me. It doesn't matter now anyway, there arn't any snails left and I took the shrimp back on Saturday.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

we've also found invert deaths when we've put new plants into the tank sometimes. if the plants had previously been in some copper treatment (which is fairly likely as most retailers make some attempts to rid they're plants of snails before they go out) and you don't rinse them then the copper can get into your tank and kill inverts

 

[three-fingers]

Ph - 6.6
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 10
Water - <3 (soft)
Temperature is approx 24 degrees celcius

Snails need an alkaline pH other wise their shells corrode and sometimes they will just die before this happens. They also prefer hard water, but it's the pH that's probably doing it.
Some snails like MTS can live in acidic water though, they prefer alkaline .

 

[Killi]

Ph - 6.6
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 10
Water - <3 (soft)
Temperature is approx 24 degrees celcius

Snails need an alkaline pH other wise their shells corrode and sometimes they will just die before this happens. They also prefer hard water, but it's the pH that's probably doing it.
Some snails like MTS can live in acidic water though, they prefer alkaline .

Really? I didn't know that

Strange though because I've kept UK pond snails in what I would guess would be the same water conditions (seeing as the water comes from the same source) when I was young, and they thrived...a bit too much!

 

[vancouver]

yeah could be the ph.. 7.6 would probably do the snails better