Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

zwergkrebszuechter wrote:Why worrying about Hydra? In Germany we have a native snail, that can eat all hydra in a tank in a few days, even it is hundreds of them. It is called Lymnea staginalis. Maybe there are snails like that in the USA, too?

I'd sure love to have them, but I've never seen them available.

I'd sure love to have them, but I've never seen them available.

They would sure help solve a major problem in aquarium keeping. Could you please tell use more about this snail, I will try to do a search on my own also.

It is unlikely that this snail lives in the USA, too. But maybe there are related species that can do the job?

zwergkrebszuechter wrote:It is unlikely that this snail lives in the USA, too. But maybe there are related species that can do the job?

I'm a member of several other aquarium forums and the issue of hydra and planaria come up all the time with no natural solution. I don't think there are easy predators for them here that don't eat shrimp too.

planaria is still a problem, here, too. There is no other way than to treat them with some anthelminthicum.

zwergkrebszuechter wrote:Why worrying about Hydra?

I believe the worrying party was concerned that the Hydra would trap and eat baby shrimp.

I personally only keep ephemeral pool inverts and enjoy watching Hydra catch and eat other inverts.

I would think that any snail that would eat Hydra would also eat your baby shrimp, if they are small enough for a Hydra to eat them.

How should a snail eat baby shrimp? The snail is slow and the shrimp swim away. The hydra cant swim away...

zwergkrebszuechter wrote:How should a snail eat baby shrimp? The snail is slow and the shrimp swim away. The hydra cant swim away...

I don't think it is likely, which is why I'd like to get some of these snails.

I've read about several cases where large apple snails have caught & eaten supposedly healthy fish and frogs buy sailing down on them. I've never seen it myself.

I've read about several cases where large apple snails have caught & eaten supposedly healthy fish and frogs buy sailing down on them. I've never seen it myself.

Interesting and would be a site to see. The snails do drop down quickly sometimes so I think it could happen.

I do not think it is likely that apple snails eat fish and frogs. Dead ones or almost dead ones maybe. However I have witnessed apple snails eat small ramshorn or physa snails. But once again, these are too slow to get away. A fish is not.

There is one other interesting snail, that has been imported to Germany in small numbers. It is a predatory snail, that preys on other snails and lives in freshwater. However only a few were imported and I were too slow to get some.

What was reported to me by some people I believe was that a large Cana snail, about baseball size would swoop down off the side of the tank (they do that, they can actually glide and direct their fall using their foot) and it would crash down on sleepy fish and dwarf frogs. A large cana has a pretty good set of chompers and would set to work on the dazed animal.

I've been nipped by these big snails that can weight 6 ounces and they can draw blood. If you are a small frog or fish and get clobbered by 1/3 pound of hungry snail, you might just get polished off. Don't sell these large snails short. They have a lot more smarts than you might think. Remember, a squid is not all the distantly related.

I've been nipped by these big snails that can weight 6 ounces and they can draw blood.

I don't think I will ever be getting one of these

Normally they are very gentle. This one didn't know me and was hungry & gave an exploratory nip. No real damage done, but they have a beak for sure. It only happened the one time, but it made a believer out of me.

Saltons are a native apple snail and they are VERY nippy, far more so than Canas.

In any event, my opinion is that they are capable of learning and sure as heck know how to survive.

I spoke to a friend from University of Nebraska. He said the biology class regularly takes water samples from a bird bath on the campus and finds hydra, daphnia, rotifers, algae.