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Gammarus for a planted pea puffer tank?

Ajm200

Member
Joined
19 Feb 2010
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Location
London
Hi

I’m hoping for some advice on adding gammarus to my 120l pea puffer tank.
Am I crazy to consider adding these to a planted tank? Are they going to destroy the plants? How fast are they? Will puffers be able to keep the population under control?

If they are OK to add which type are best and can someone point me at a good source?

Can I grow them in a bin like the daphnia? I’m assuming they’d need their own or the daphnia would be snacks. I’m going to set up a snails bin when I can get a decent number of tiny pond snails. The fussy puffers aren’t keen on ramshorns.
Can snails and gammarus go in together?

The tank is home to 10 young pea puffers and four ottos that I failed to catch when I rehomed my larger fish. There are a couple of cherry shrimp in there too. Think they hitched a lift in the net when I brought the Amazon Frogbit over from the other tank.

Low tech setup with grassy soft leaved planta like blyxa, vallis, dwarf sag covering 75% of the substrate

It is a dirted tank capped with a thin layer of fine gravel then an inch of sand.

Thanks
 
Hi all,
Am I crazy to consider adding these to a planted tank? Are they going to destroy the plants? How fast are they? Will puffers be able to keep the population under control?
No, no, fairly fast, yes.
If they are OK to add which type are best and can someone point me at a good source?
Gammarus pulex, isn't ideal, because it has high oxygen requirements and won't do well in tank. They are very cold tolerant, so you can keep them outside, but they still need some water movement.

I'd be wary of buying "Gammarus" via ebay etc unless the vendor sounds fairly knowledgeable, as there are a <"number of alien "Killer Shrimps"> now establishedm in the wild, in the UK. What most people sell as "Gammarus" is Hyalella azteca, <"I've not kept these">.

For me the best are <"Asellus aquaticus"> and <"Crangonyx pseudogracilis">. You are more then welcome to some of mine (and some other snails) if you can't source some from anywhere else.
Can I grow them in a bin like the daphnia? I’m assuming they’d need their own or the daphnia would be snacks. I’m going to set up a snails bin when I can get a decent number of tiny pond snails.
You can (I do), they won't eat the Daphnia.
I’m going to set up a snails bin
<"Physella acuta"> is the snail you want.

cheers Darrel
 
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Thank you so much for all the info. Yes please to some. Let me know cost etc
 
Hi all,
The usual apologies for the quality of the video, but this is my son's Shrimp tank, <"still no shrimps"> but it has plenty of other crustaceans and snails, including Asellus, Crangonyx & Daphnia (at lower left). Crangonyx are the medium sized swimming crustaceans, so you can see they are quite speedy. In my experience fish are very keen on them.



From side
FromSide.jpg


From above:
FromAbove.jpg


cheers Darrel
 
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What most people sell as "Gammarus" is Hyalella azteca, <"I've not kept these">.
Can I grow them in a bin like the daphnia? I’m assuming they’d need their own or the daphnia would be snacks. I’m going to set up a snails bin when I can get a decent number of tiny pond snails. The fussy puffers aren’t keen on ramshorns.
Can snails and gammarus go in together?

I have Hyalella azteca we think (see that link Darrel provided).

My experience of keeping them is that they don't eat most plants, but will eat moss leaves - they stripped the moss in a couple of tanks where their population proliferated. My experience with them is if their population can go unchecked, they will rapidly breed and out complete most other tank inhabitants. Soft acidic water, particularly with CO2 injection, seems to limit their population growth, and predation will keep them firmly in check (my Chocolate gourami actively hunt them) and I rarely see any adults in my main tank.

Without either of those two factors, they will rapidly dominate a tank. I had them in a Moina tank, and saw them actively hunt the Moina - probabaly due to a lack of other availble food sources (they has already stripped all the roots from the floating plants). They eventually wiped out the Moina population.

I also had them in a low tech tank where the guppies were unable to keep the population in check - in that tank they completely destroyed the moss, and outcompeted the cherry shrimp reducing their population significantly. I also suspected that they eventually started killing the Ramhorns - several times I saw actively crawling snails with numerous shrimp attached to their heads and ended up with lots of empty snail shells on the substrate.

Personally I wouldn't willingly add this type of shrimp to any tank that doesn't contain active hunters. For tanks with active hunters they are ideal, and bring out some interesting behaviours in the 'predators'.
 
Hi all,
I also had them in a low tech tank where the guppies were unable to keep the population in check - in that tank they completely destroyed the moss, and outcompeted the cherry shrimp reducing their population significantly. I also suspected that they eventually started killing the Ramhorns - several times I saw actively crawling snails with numerous shrimp attached to their heads and ended up with lots of empty snail shells on the substrate.
Interesting.

I <"still have nightmares"> about the potential for introducing <"Dikerogammarus to the tanks">, which I could have done really easily when I <"initially got the Crangonyx">. @FrankR has linked in a really useful guide to "Gammarus" <Bugs you might encounter in your aquarium>.

I'm pretty sure that you won't get the same problem with Asellus or Crangonyx, they are mainly detritivores <"Leaf breakdown rates as a functional indicator were influenced by an invasive non-native invertebrate in urban ponds">. I don't keep a wide range of plants, but both Asellus and Crangonyx are definitely moss safe and haven't eaten any of my other plants.

Asellus are <"safe with fish eggs">, but I'm not sure about Crangonyx, they are quite enthusiastic eaters of fish food etc. so I would be more circumspect with them.

cheers Darrel
 
I had Asellus in a few breeding tanks, which were essentially moss and eggs, and didn't notice any problems from what i remember. I had ramshorns but nothing to control the Asellus populations apart from when the fry grew larger.

The moss was a mixture of java and willow moss (which is where I think the Asellus came in from as it was out of the local river), so quite weedy, fast growing species. I don't know if slower more delicate moss might be more palatable.
 
Thanks for all the extra info guys. I have a tank with 10 little ‘murder beans’ so they should be predatory enough control them.

Darrel Can you pm me with your paypal info and I’ll send the money over friends and family and send my address.

Sorry I didn’t mean to go quiet on you. Have a killer migraine and have been sleeping way too long
 
I’m thinking of adding a snail colony in an air driven HOB Fluval breeding box on the puffer tank. Will be easier to keep the main tank clean as I can overfeed and siphon off mess easily away from the sand. It should prevent a total massacre if the puffers go on a snail killing rampage and any in the main tank critters shouldn’t have free access to all the snails at once
 
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