[thaerin]

Hola peeps,
My dear bristlenose pleco will be departing tomorrow eve to make room for new things in the tank. He was a good fish, but kept damaging my poor sword. And with the Great Snail Purge (frigging things breed worse than rabbits) going on, I'll have some spare room in the tank.
Looking to get shrimp to replace the pleco and snails, whose job were to eat algae.
Suggestions/favorites?
Here's my tank list and parameters so we stick to things that can survive.
8.1 pH, 7 gH, 13 kH, 75 degrees F
0 Ammonia and Nitrite, Nitrites 30 ppm (i'm working on it!) red cherries and ghosts are surviving it though
7 White Clouds, 7 pygmy cories, 2 peppered cories, 1 cory punctatus, 1 platy
bout 6 ghost shrimp, 7 red cherry shrimp

Not enough cherries right now to deal with the fuzz algae creeping around so I defiently need some more algae eaters. I might get an Amano or two, but now many. Other than that, any suggestions?

 

[Piscesgirl]

You may want to try a bamboo shrimp or two. Personally, I've never kept them but I hear most folks that do really like them.

How do you plan on purging the snails? Most snail killing meds are toxic to shrimp as well. In addition, my suggestion is to reduce feeding. Snails do not get out of hand unless there is a lot of food for them to eat.

 

[trenac]

Tiger shrimp make great algae eaters and also appear to eat snails, I saw mine the other day cleaning out the inside of a snail shell. I say appear because I don't know if mine actual eat a live snail or was just cleaning out the remains of a dead snail.

 

[thaerin]

Hmmm I think I might just try them =) the tigers look beautiful and i've got so much "stuff" floating around in the tank, the bamboo shrimp should be able to find enough food.

As for the Great Snail Purge, I'm plucking every darn snail I can find out. Also leaving them food for them to collect on then removing it. Trying to reduce the overpopulation, maybe not completely eradicate it. Depends how much they irritate me again. I know there's lots of eggs hidden away all around the tank. Removed some of them. Just doing it the old fashioned way =)

 

[John P.]

That pH is a a little high for many freshwater shrimp to really thrive. Are you injecting CO2?

 

[thaerin]

Some, using Nutrafin C02 system. I'd like to go pressurized but can't afford it and my mother won't let me in the process of lowering it by mixing tap water with dionized water, which has all hardness, buffering and such removed.