Crayfish will eat both snails and the plants you mention.
Dave
David L. McNeely, Ph.D., Professor of Biology
Langston University; P.O. Box 1500
Langston, OK 73050; email: dlmcneely-in-lunet.edu
telephone: (405) 466-6025; fax: 405) 466-3307
home page http://www.lunet.edu/mcneely/index.htm
"Where are we going?" "I don't know, are we there yet?"
----- Original Message -----
From: Jase Roberts <nanfa_list-in-jaseroberts.net>
Date: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 11:28 pm
Subject: NANFA-L-- Tiny limpets(?)-in-water line / snails & crayfish
> Hi,
>
> In one of my native tanks (north-central Vermont) I started seeing
> tiny snail-like critters right about-in-the water line. These
> guys are really small -- from less than 1mm long to maybe 2mm long
> now (definitely growing somewhat). I can't make out too many
> details with a 10x hand lens, but I can see that they've got snail-
> like mouths and probably antennae. What I can see of the shells
> looks a lot more like a limpet than a normal snail. They look to
> be roughly conical and fit tightly to the sides (I can push the
> critters around with a toothpick and they stay suctioned to the
> glass). The top set of pics-in-the bottom of
> http://members.aol.com/mkohl2/Fwlimpets.html looks about right,
> although mine are way smaller. There are probably 15 or so
> visible in my 10 gallon now, all right-in-the water line.
>
> Do folks have experience with freshwater limpets? Are they common
> thing to have living in native aquaria? Any chance this is
> actually a life stage of a more conventional snail (I did have
> some in snails in this tank earlier)? I'm surprised that there
> doesn't seem to be anything in the NANFA e-mail archive mentioning
> limpets.
> Second, I'm wondering about folks' experiences with crayfish/snail
> interactions. I had 6 or so smallish snails in my 30 gallon tank
> that disappeared within a week (only one large ram's horn snail
> remains). At the time I blamed my pumpkinseed, but now I wonder
> if the crayfish I had was actually the guilty party? I see some
> references to crayfish eating snails elsewhere on the Internet.
> Is it possible to have snails and crayfish co-exist in a tank, or
> will crayfish eventually wipe the snails out? I feel like I need
> some snails to control algae growth.
>
> I also suspect my crayfish to be the culprit in cutting free the
> Coontail/Hornwort (Ceratophyllum) plants I have tied to rocks-in-
> the bottom. The plants are doing great in my 10 gallon tank
> without crayfish, but most were floating free and stuck to the
> filter within a week or two in the 30 gallon where the crayfish
> lives. Again, do other folks have experience with this?
> Solutions to keep the plants in place? Sorry, no idea on the
> species of the crayfish.
>
> Thanks,
> Jase
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