Will Snails Eat Fry?

[ClaireN]

Does anybody know if snails will eat small fry? or if bigger fry will eat smaller fry?

The reason I an asking is I had 4 Platy babies and 10 Guppy babies in a fry tank with some fairly large snails, there are plenty of artificial plants for the fry to hide in so I don't always see all of them every day, but I give it a good hover every couple of days where I move everything around, two days ago I found a dead fry in the fry nest , and tonight I was concerned as I had only seen 2 of my Platys and 6 of my Guppys. I've just moved everything out of the tank and had a good look round and hovered there are definitely no more bodies, but I am definitely down to only 2 Platys and 6 Guppys .

Does anybody have any ideas what could of happened to the rest?

 

[Bloo]

Snails eat fry = no
Larger platy (or guppy) fry eat smaller fry = no (very very unlikely)

Fry are very sensitive to water conditions - it could be that they just died
I take it the tank was heated and filtered ? what did you feed them on ? How old was they fry ?

 

[ClaireN]

Snails eat fry = no
Larger platy (or guppy) fry eat smaller fry = no (very very unlikely)

Fry are very sensitive to water conditions - it could be that they just died
I take it the tank was heated and filtered ? what did you feed them on ? How old was they fry ?

Thanks for you quick reply.

Yep the tank (5 UK G) is heated and filtered (with piece of tight over the inlet to the filter so they can get sucked in), water changes are done every 2 to 3 days and stats are ok (ammonia - 0, Nitrite - 0, Nitrate - 20). Normally feed them 4 times a day on fry food, had just started to feed them very finally crushed flake food, and they have also had a little bit of pea when im giving them to the other tanks. The fry are approximately a month old.

Claire

 

[RinRin]

I have a similar problem like you, my guppy fry tank was okay before I put a snail inside my tank, but suddenly my guppies was dying off, I don't know if the snail is eating it or maybe when the guppies go near it he crushes some of their body parts, either way I'm not putting anything near my guppy fries again

 

[Colin_T]

Snails won't eat fish unless the fish is dead and sitting on the bottom of the tank.

Baby fish will eat each other. Big babies that are a month old will eat new born babies. This is why people that breed fish go through the ponds/ tanks each month and sort the fry into sizes. To stop the bigger fry eating the smaller ones.

 

[itiwhetu]

The only time this could be a problem is if you have Apple snails. I have seen Apple snails run over fry that are in the gravel between the glass and substrate. In theory they could pick them off if they wanted to.