fish tank help please!

[thisisyesterday]

things were going swimmingly (pun intended) in our little tank, aside from our hideous snail infestation

but this morning... my shrimp was dead!!!

the other one is fine, but poor little Cracker was a goner
he looked normal (but dead) when i fished him out... how long do they live? what mighjt have killed him?

and how, oh how, can I get rid of the snails???? I've been battling them for weeks and weeks. A while back we removed everything fgrom the tank and gave it all a really good de-snailing but they're back with a vengeance.

I must have taken over 60 of them out today.
I thought maybe I was over-feeding the fish,and that had caused the explosion in snail numbers, so i stopped feeding them as much. But the problem is that we have a panda cory and the 2 1 shrimp which need sinking food, and i'm guessing it's that which the snails are eating too? and maybe when i cut down that's why Cracker died?

I know everyone advises against the chemical snail killer stuff.. but would it be ok to use if my fish could take a holiday in my friend's tank for a while???

Are you sure he's really dead and he's not just moulted? Shrimp are sensitive to water quality, have you checked your nitrAte level?

As for the snails, you can't get rid of them and you'll go nuts trying there are ways to reduce their numbers though, first of all make sure that you are not overfeeding the fish so that there is nothing left over for the snails. Give the fish as much as they can eat in 3 minutes and then scoop any leftover out with a net.

You can also stick a bit of lettuce leaf in the tank at night and then in the morning when it is covered in snails, take it out and bin it.

I wouldn't swap your fish over just to get rid of the snails, it causes them a lot of stress and there's a risk of diseases, injuries etc and if you used the snail killer with the fish in the tank it would cause a massive ammonia spike.

The only other option I can think of is an assassin snail (yes really), it's a snail that eats other snails. If you end up with too many of them then you can sell the spares on ebay and make a bit of pocket money too

no, he was definitely dead. poor thing.

dp already wants an assassin snail, but i was worried it would attack the shrimps as our pest snails are very tiny and i read that the assassins prefer bigger food!

Never kept assassins and shrimps but I've heard mixed reviews. Shrimps move pretty quick so I think they would be OK but if your pest snails are pretty small then maybe the assassin would get sneaky.... I would try removing more of the pest snails first using a bit of lettuce leaf, you can reduce the numbers a lot that way.