Can Snails Kill Fry?

[vail94]

I have been having my first sucess with artifically raising Rams until last night, the situation is the night before I put a snail out of my inlaws pond (pond has no fish in it) to help eat the excess food and when i feed the fry that morning i was running late for work so I feed and left not taking a count on how many fry I had. I get home last night to feed and in the light there is 3 fry left in the tank ! The three that are left were healthy the question is did i lose that many fry (probably in the range of 25 to 30 fry) and this little black devil just ate there corpses or if the rams were asleep or laying on the bottom could the snail catch them and eat them? Has anyone else had this problem?

 

[Bilbo]

Yes me to.
I put about 150 just free swimming Ram fry into a small tank last night with a 1cm pond snail. He made a straight line to a mass of fry and kind of ran over them. Lost only about 2 or 3 before he got flicked over the fence.

 

[viejo]

I've never put snails in with wigglers before but I can see how it would happen.. Mystery (Ampullaria) type snails have never been a problem IMHO after the fry are fully motile. The good news Charles, is that the breeding pair will probably spawn again shortly. especially with the rainy weather that we are (finally :wink: ) experiencing..

 

[vail94]

The trick is that the fry were free swimming. It is a mystery to me. thanks for your responses.

 

[bigbird]

morning,

snails in general eat vegetation and dead items lying on the ground. Snails have no mechanism to literally catch fry, unless then go over them and smoother them, then digest them. You stated your fry were free swimming, so would find it hard that the deaths of your fry was caused by snail/s .
Maybe the snail you introduced from the pond, brought in a foreign matter that the small fry were not used to. Anyway, like in most cases, the first batch of egss normally are just a tester like system. Your rams will lay again and I would suggest that you place your snail back into the pond and use other fish to clean up the left overs, like Otos. Sorry to hear of the loss, but they will spawn again. cheer jk :biggrin: