have multiple questions that i'm seeking answers to

[SiNiStEr NaTiOn]

1> I have ghost shrimps in my tank. In the beginning it was plain ghost shrimps and ghost shrimps with red bad on the antenna, front legs. Trying to figure out which ghost shrimp with the red band are. because it's these that survive in my tank with the initial 30 of both type, only 8 survive and at this time there's a total of 15 with 3 females full with eggs.

When I got them i drip acclimate them for about almost 3 hours. But whatever breed these shrimps are, can handle from FW to BW with SG 1.012 ( current SG of my 55)

2> This question deals with plants. So I'll try and post multiple questions in this part.

2a> I had been instructed when buying new plants, to give them a salt bath for about 2 to 3 minutes to kill off any snails and snail eggs that could be on the plant. This method fails terrible. So what's a effective way to treat new plants to insure to radicate any snail invasion in my tank.

2b> At one time Had my tanks setup nice with plants, but snail invasion wiped out 95% of the plants in my tank. I'm leaning toward fake plants , But if i decide to keep going with livbe plants, it has to be live plants that not only can survive FW but also in BW. I know there are some that can.

 

[PEMfish]

1> Could be P. paludosus. Ghost shrimp is such a general term its almost slang. It can almost be defined as assorted shrimp.

2a> I remember being in that situation ( wish I didn't ). All I did was switch dealers. I found a LFS that dose the snail control for me. In short; if you dont want snails, dont buy them.

2b> Thats a sad story. Why is it that they only like the big, good looking leaves? Must be ripe.
Not many plants fit the bill, salt is usually intolerable. Anacharis is the only one I can think of. Bacopa and Crypts ( short for Cryptocoryne ) maybe too.

 

[SiNiStEr NaTiOn]

I try to buy live plants in tanks that has no signs of snail, but yet every now and then there's a plant I'm after and it's in one of 2 tanks that has snails. The thing is there's no visible signs of snails on the plant, but the way snails get into my tank is from plants that has snail eggs. Now working on a friends tank that was taken over by snails, I now know how to identify snail eggs sack. Just got to look for and clear gel looking blobs on the plants.

After 2 weeks of vigorous maintenance on his tank, I think I had remove the snail infestation in his tank. today i perform a wc on his tank, he said he hasn't seen any snails for almost a week. took 10 gallons out of his 29 and I saw nothing but clear gel on the glass. I use a razor blade and scraped the glass clear of snail eggs, and topped of his tank with fresh water. from what i seen the worst infestation was on a drift wood he had in his tank, under it it was baby snails from one end to the other end with crap load of snail eggs his tank hardly had any live plants in it, but a extremely large algae bloom. the thing is looking in the tank even from the side you couldn't see the bloom in the water, until I was siphoning the water into a 5 gallon bucket and looking into the bucket you could see how green the water was. Like i said it started as a 10 Gallons but ended up being 15 gallons a 50% wc because of the algae bloom.

also PEM vals can tolerate BW also, the only thing with them is it stunt their growth. The jungle Val I have in my tank in FW they would reach 14" -20", but in BW they only get to 4" - 7" I had about 5 jungle val and now I could count at least 4 new shoots, that is about 2"-4" from the main section where i have them planted.

 

[DaveK]

I have found that snail control seems to be an ongoing problem in FW planted tanks. They are very tough to get rid of. I have found the best way is to have a few snail eating fish in there, but most of them, like clown loaches, would consider ghost shrimp lunch.

You can also kill snails with copper, but that means taking the shrimp out while your treating.

The other effective means is what you have just done. Keep removing the gell masses of eggs and the snails every time you see them. In time you'll get them.

Personally, I'd only use plastic plants in cases where I just couldn't grow live plants, such as a tank of large cichlids.

There is a lot more to growing pants than it would seem. If your really going to get into this area, check out forums for planted tanks. Here is one (offsite) - The Planted Tank - Articles, Forums, Pictures, Links click on forum to see the posts.

Don't the picts you will see of some of the extremely well done planted tanks get you down. You can do it too. It's kind of like comming on here and seeing some of the reef systems for the first time.

 

[LisaR]

What kind of fish do you keep? I have a 75g heavily planted tank and with the addition of 2 botia loaches, my snails are kept under control. I really do credit them with the control because before them, I had loads and loads of the malaysian trumpets.

 

[SiNiStEr NaTiOn]

it's not me that has this problem, it's a friend, and his infestation isn't mst but pond snails. I believe I had taken care of the problem, did a complete tear down on his tank, and he had a piece of drift wood in there that was filled with egg sacs, it's been about 2 weeks now an he says that he haven't seen any signs of snails since the tear down. So hopefully they are gone.

My tank has only one snail look like a MST, and how it surviving the brackish condition ( SG 1.015 ) of my tank, I have no idea. I do know he keeps himself buried down in the sand and only come out sometime after a 25% WC.

 

[Luukosian]

I have a small snail population in every planted tank I keep, if they get bad I just manually scrape them off the glass. Never seemed to be much of a problem. A Botia will reduce populations but some species can be aggressive so watch out. I had one that used to go crazy chasing the other fish around.

Scraping eggs is going to be a losing battle, you're always going to miss some. Years ago I used to soak new plants in a weak bleach solution but I gave that up a long time ago.