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About ramshorn snails with pygmy sunfish


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#1 Guest_Joshaeus_*

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Posted 01 July 2013 - 12:32 PM

Are adult ramshorns large enough NOT to get eaten by pygmy sunfish? I am thinking of getting a breeding population of ramshorns in the planned pygmy sunfish tank in order for the sunfish to have some snail caviar in their diet, but would I also need to worry about the adults?

#2 Guest_EricaLyons_*

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Posted 01 July 2013 - 03:18 PM

They don't eat the adults, just the little ones. I'm not sure at what size they eat them (in the egg sack? when first hatched?) but I do know that the Elassoma gilberti tanks I kept had a lower reproduction rate than tanks without the pygmy sunfish. The first freshwater tank I set up after keeping only Elassoma for a year shocked me with the rate of snail reproduction. It's a neolamprologus multifasciatus shell dwelling cichlid tank, where I guess the cichlids are somewhat symbiotic with snails and instinctively know not to eat them. So the snail population just exploded, it was ridiculous. I added some of our native carnivorous palaemonetes shrimp to eat the snails, and that's working well so far. Hmm maybe I'm getting off track. My point is: Will there still be a sustainable snail population in your Elassoma tank? Yes, they will breed and have a sustainable population. Will there be quite a lot of them? No, it's not the snail-splosion you see in other setups.

Edited by EricaLyons, 01 July 2013 - 03:18 PM.


#3 Guest_Joshaeus_*

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Posted 01 July 2013 - 07:01 PM

By the way, I think I've just about finalized my setup! The pygmy sunfish will be kept both in a 5 gallon tank near my bed (the one the paradise fish, Chance, is currently in - he will soon be moved to the much more spacious quarters of a divided 30 gallon tank, with another paradise fish on the other side) and in a roughly 7 gallon sterilite bin that may or may not serve as a breeding tank. Both will be populated with ramshorns (possibly blue ones for cosmetic reasons) long before I get the sunfish.

Edited by Joshaeus, 01 July 2013 - 07:04 PM.


#4 Guest_gzeiger_*

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Posted 03 July 2013 - 04:48 PM

Erica is right. They eat both developing eggs and small snails, but if you have a good amount of algae in the tank there should be plenty of survivors. When I took apart my Elassoma tank after about a year, there were six adult snails that I had originally added, probably 300 very small ones, in the range of 0.5 mm or less, and maybe only a dozen of intermediate size that had managed to survive that stage.

#5 Guest_Joshaeus_*

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Posted 05 November 2013 - 07:30 AM

I admit that this is a really late response, but would pygmy sunfish eat baby malaysian trumpet snails? Or are mts's too developed at birth for the sunnies to predate?

#6 Guest_gerald_*

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Posted 05 November 2013 - 10:31 AM

I think Melanoides snails are probably too hard for Elassoma to eat, even newborns.




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