New board member here. I recently 10 snails and 10 shrimp from Mufasa. I gave the tank time to cycle and then dropped the new family members in their new home. All has been going well for about 2 weeks.
Sometimes the snails will climb the sides of the tank and float on the biofilm at the water surface happily munching away. I've noticed this a few times, but haven't really though about it....Sometimes the shrimp will come up behind the snail and grab on to the shell and start doing what looks like attacking the snail. At first I just figured they were eating bacteria on the shell, and I think they were doing that, but just now I noticed one shrimp grabbing the snails head and looked like it was trying to figure out a way to eat it as if it was using it's arms to try and pull head (or an eye) off.
Has anyone experienced this? How do I prevent the shrimp from being too aggressive with the snails?
Are you sure the snail was alive? The shrimp will readily feed on and pull out dead snails but I've never seen any go after the body of a living snail, only scrub at the shell for biofilm.
The shrimp wasn't attacking the snail. Shrimp like to pick on everything including snails and they don't care if they're picking at their shells or the actual snail body. Supershrimp aren't all that great when it comes to anatomy or anything more complicated than reaching for food and picking it up. They're definitely not predators.
I have one pipipi snail in my tank, and it always has an entourage of shrimp. Using a jeweler's loupe, it is easy to see that they are eating the snail's slime trail, which is more like a cloud than a trail.
They're definitely not predators.