Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping => Invertebrates - Shrimps and Snails => Topic started by: TopCookie on March 19, 2018, 10:51:54 PM
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I have a dozen Amano shrimp, one juvenile Lemon BN Plec and now have five Rabbit snails, which combined make up the clean up crew in my tank... It has to be said, that between them, they absolutely removed every shred of algae in the tank superbly...!!! I suspect it is the Amanos that are the most efficient, but it's hard to know now...
So, with them having devoured all the algae, the problem now is keeping them all fed...!!!
I would imagine this must be a fairly common "issue", especially with newbies to fish keeping... So, the Lemon BN Plec will eat red pepper but shows little to no interest in courgette or cucumber - could this be with her (I suspect it's a she - no bristles yet) just being a bambina still and consequently unfamiliar with other veg...? The shrimp soon mob any veg I pop in the tank and if they happen across it on their travels, so do the Rabbit snails... The best I have found so far are the recently new to the menu jumbo sized algae wafers - these seem to attract the Amano shrimp in double fast time and even the Lemon BN Plec will munch on them once she realises there's one in there...
Just curious what you guys n gals feed to your clean up crew after their main objective has been accomplished...?
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There is a whole range of things that you can feed to BNs, amanos, and snails.
My BNs are very partial to algae wafers, which my amanos will run off with given the chance. Any suitable veggies are very popular with all.
You can even grow algae on rocks just by putting them in water in a container on a windowsill for a few weeks. This is very time consuming for fish that will take wafers & veggies, but I've done it for some of the fussier fish in my river tank. I've also used Repashy products
https://www.repashy.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=3
:)
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Thanks Donna... :)
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I put a couple of leaves of spinach in every few days. I put them in a bowl, pour over bowling water and leave for 5 mins. This helps them sink when you add to the tank, so I don't need a clip.
My clean up crew is 14 amanos and 3 otos. I'm not sure who eats the spinach, but it disappears within 24 hours and I've never seen anyone eating it! It's possible it's the kuhlis, but gut feel is it's not.
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I love those little Oto Cats... I'm pretty much fully stocked with fish now and thus can't really have them, not to mention the lack of algae which wouldn't help with Otos... Fantastic little fish though... :D
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It can be tricky to get healthy otos... They have a bacteria in their stomachs which helps them digest their food and if they have not been eating in transport or in the store and this bacteria dies they will basically starve to death no matter what you do after purchase. Sorry if that's a bit gruesome... point is to only by healthy ones in the store that have been eating.
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I purchased 5 otto's about a month ago now and they are doing really well but the guy at MA said they have been here for over 2 months when i brought them. I also have 8 amano shrimp and god knows how many tangerine tigers as they are breeding along with the assassin snails who have cleared up all my nuisance snails and are also help clearing up any waste food that the shrimps don't get.
My otto's seem to like algae wafers and also the tetra tabimin tablets and join in the free for all with my catfish.
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That's interesting to know Matt... Thank you sir... :)