
Originally Posted by
stormhawk
In that case, the presence of ammonia and nitrite if any, are affecting your snails and shrimp. You should always put in the shrimps and snails in batches, not all at once, even in newly cycled tanks, so that the bacteria has time to proliferate in the filter media. I tend to use a "canary" to see if the water is fine, which in my case, is a cheap ramshorn snail. If it can't survive in the tank for 48 hours, it's not ready. If the snail shows signs of retracting back into the shell and refuse to come out, I will freak out.
However, some snails take awhile to come out of their shell. I bought 5 new blue apple snails from GC last week and introduced them to my community tank. Initially, 4 were actively foraging once they were in the tank, but one refused to come out of its shell. I was resigned to seeing it die on me, but the next day, the shell was missing from the spot. I thought it died so I did a "shell" count and found all 5 alive and actively foraging.
In the case of Sulawesi shrimps and snails, I feel that a matured tank is a must for these inverts, since they seem to be very sensitive to a whole host of things, and not just diet issues.
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