# Avoiding disease with shrimps and snails



## jadaBlu (Feb 14, 2013)

Can you hatch any shrimps or snails suitable for bettas on your own? Otherwise how can be sure not to bring any "cooties" into your tank? It's kind of pointless to quarantine your fish just to have them possibly spread something.


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## itzBlitz (Mar 27, 2013)

> t's kind of pointless to quarantine your fish just to have them possibly spread something.


the whole point of quarantining new fish is to make sure they dont bring any sickness or diseases 
into your tank. it gives you an opportunity to observer the new fish and take note of any ailments
before introducing a fish sick or critter.


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## Laki (Aug 24, 2011)

Exactly, quarentine is used to prevent spreading illness. You could buy shrimp/snails and have them in a separate tank for a month or a few weeks to watch for any signs of illness among them. There is still no guarantee they won't affect your fish. Usually if the betta is healthy and robust his health won't be affected by new tank mates.


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## jadaBlu (Feb 14, 2013)

What problems do the shrimp and snails have that you watch for? I could skip them but I gather they definitely contribute the ecosystem of a healthy tank.


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## Laki (Aug 24, 2011)

Most noticeable would be death. lol You can't really watch for clamped fins or no eating. 

If you want to add shrimp in with your betta I, and many members here, would recommend amano shrimp bc they're large enough to defend themselves. I lost one fully grown adult RCS to my small-mouthed Bowser (I picked out my 2 largest rcs to help control algae but it didn't work out. They were so red and pretty too) Some people manage to keep ghost shrimp but where ghosts were overbred for food and other experimental things such as disposable tank cycling tools they are susceptible to less than are rcs and amanos (who were selectively bred to be versatile for a wide range of home tank environments)

As for snails. I kept ponds and ramshorns before, they're pretty quick to die in the wrong conditions and many people see them as pests anyway. I have no experience with mystery or rabbit snails (people here on the forum do though) but Iknow they poop a lot! And they grow really big. I keep nerites (well, one for now) and she has a very low bioload and eats all the algae. Nerites exclusively eat algae (I could NOT get her or my old nerite to eat algae wafers) so I would recommend nerites for a tank with algae problems. I haven't fed Milly in 8 months, she is very robust and has almost doubled in size! lol 

In a q-tank, you wold simply watch for activity levels, how much they eat (and what they eat) and how they act after a water change and such.


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## Viva (Oct 18, 2012)

Yeah Amano shrimp are awesome! They cleaned all the brown algae off my plants/sides of the tank in a week. I have 7. 5 females (larger) and two males (smaller). The females get pretty big too! I put my hand in the tank the other day to fix a plant and two of the shrimp were crawling on my arm. It tickled but kinda creeped me out for some reason - haha!


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## Otterfun (Dec 31, 2012)

jadaBlu said:


> Can you hatch any shrimps or snails suitable for bettas on your own? Otherwise how can be sure not to bring any "cooties" into your tank? It's kind of pointless to quarantine your fish just to have them possibly spread something.


Snails and shrimps are not affected by columnar is but can be carriers. So QT them 3 weeks would be good since parasites, diseases will die off without a host.
Columnaris is an opportunistic disease bring about by stress because it already exists in the water, so keeping water low in nitrates and have room in the tank will lower the stress level and reduce chances of catching it.


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## jadaBlu (Feb 14, 2013)

Is colarmar disease the most common one to affect sorrorities?


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