What goes up must come down

This past weekend I decided I had to take down the 45-gallon with the leopoldi angel, black neon tetras and cardinal tetras. My work schedule is such that it has become tricky to maintain all these tanks, and the tank itself was not enjoyable for me. I had planned on stocking it more to make it more interesting, but I am going to have to put together a snail tank for Otis, so something had to go.

Since I'm down to only one leopoldi it was hard to justify keeping this tank up, when he could be moved to the 40 heavily planted community with tetras and one wild ram. My wild ram and the wild caught leopoldi angel are both snail eaters (more so than a domestic cichlid, interestingly) and I cannot keep a population of snails going for my puffer, Otis.

I've therefore taken down the 45, and relocated the angel into the 40, along with the black neons and cardinals, and all is well, for the time being. I'm not terribly optimistic about the angel, since this is a wild caught fish who has difficulty settling into new situations and does not like to be moved. On top of that I put him into a relatively brightly lit, heavily planted tank, and this is really not the ideal setup. He should have a deep, dim and branchy tank with floating plants only, but I can't really do that for him at the moment. We shall see. I put the 45 into the eaves for my next adventure!

I kept a dedicated snail tank once before, but it ran aground at some point due to my inability to keep it as clean as I'd like - the water likely became too acidic and the snails died out. I kept it on the floor (no available lateral surfaces!) so I had to use a Python to do PWCs, and this would suck up eggs and babies, but I could not get a siphon going with a regular siphon with it so low to the floor. *Sigh* Anyway, I obtained a very large supply of snails from an Aquabid dealer and she was VERY kind and informative, and gave me full instructions on maintaining a good healthy colony. She can be found on Aquabid under Nelly's Fishy Friends, so hit her up!

I have resurrected Otis' old 10-gal and set that up with calciferous sand, rocks and driftwood, and a lance-leaved anubias plant. This is home to some of my new ramshorns, most of which are a very good pencil-eraser size and larger, which impressed me. I have put about 25 of them into my tank at work, which is where I have been harvesting snails from for Otis of late, though they are thin on the ground. Now that I'm going to be working full time I can take special care to feed that tank and support the new population of snails.

Now I want some tankmates for the snails in the 10-gal at home, and envisioned a nano setup with celestial peal danios or some of the nifty micro rasboras, for instance, but I am picturing the wee fishies snacking on tiny snail babies, and decided I needed to rethink this. What about shrimp? Crystal reds? Would they eat eggs and babies enough to prevent my snail colony from thriving? I'm off to email Nelly and get her advice on this.

Update: Nelly does not see any reason why I could not keep shrimp with the snails, but she has not done it. She keeps guppies with hers. I do think I'll try some very small shrimp species and see what happens. I like shrimp anyway, and this will be a suitable setup for them. She mentions that the most important thing for a snail tank is the GRAVEL, since that's where they breed and the babies can safely hunker down in the crevices, but this is, as mentioned, already set up as a sand tank. I'm hoping this is going to be okay! There is irony in the reality that so many aquarists have nuisance snails they have trouble getting rid of, and here I am, trying desperately to cultivate them.

I've said it before, but here it goes again: If you have an uncontrollable snail population I promise you are overfeeding your tank. If the fish get all the food the snails will die right out. This is why I have had poor results at work - I'm there only three days a week and the fish don't get fed during that time, and they go 4 days without food when we aren't there every other Friday. I'm not getting the molly babies I'd expect, either. That's not such a big deal, but I'd like to have more than one tank for snails, since if something goes wrong I'll have a backup. My schedule is switching to 5 days a week at work, so I am positive this will result in a thriving snail population (that is a gravel tank!) and more molly babies.

The jury is still out with regards to the angel in the 40-gal, but this was the right choice for me right now and hopefully he will settle. An interesting thing is going on, though, and that is that these fish suddenly do not like flake food. I watch carefully and they all take it up and spit it right out. I'm not sure what's up with that. They also do the same with the tiny NLS "growth" pellets that are about 1-2 mm in diameter. I don't really know what kind of food they want.