Snails and fry?

[ssantac]

Hi everyone,

I now working on converting my fry to frozen mysis. The oldest is +wks, the rest are 4. The oldest is for sure eating some mysis. But I was wondering if since I am adding the frozen if I should add some snails to help keep the tank clean. They are all in a 10gal right now, and I clean/water change 2x/2gal a day. The 6wk old is looking for food, and seems to pass up a lot of the smaller BBS, this has me thinking maybe I should leave some in there in between feedings for him to eat.

My main concern is any of them getting eaten/hurt by mistake. They're seems to be a few of them, the oldest included, that like to hunt the bottom of the tank almost exclusively. They are always snout down cruisin around eating and all.

Thanks

[rayjay]

IME, the biggest thing to worry about when raising fry is bacterial contamination.
I would be cleaning the nursery frequently and removing any of the frozen foods that don't get eaten so that it's not fuel for the nasty bacteria.
I would be cleaning the glass of the aquarium at least every third day but removing uneaten food daily.
Adding snails is just another way to possibly introduce some pathogen of one sort or another than can make survival that much more difficult.

[kirklinsclownfi]

Can crabs do the same thing as well.

[namxas]

We have typically run a few snails in our fry tanx to help with the housekeeping once they're weaned.