ghost shrimp snail eaters?

aquacutlure

aquacutlure

THE FURRY BEAST
Jun 13, 2009
361
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REDDING, CA
I wanted to know if a ghost shrimp will have an appetite for small snails such as mts,baby trapdoors,ramshorns, bladders.

Also if a shrimp has a white worm inside of its body in the ghost shrimp tank at the lfs should i avoid buying from that tank all together or just avoid getting the infected shrimp with the white worm.

Also would they breed in complete freshwater?
 
Yes, Ghost Shrimp will eat small snails.

The worm inside it is the parasitic Horsehair Worm. I don't enough about it's life cycle to really say if they can easily infect others in the same tank.

The commonly sold Ghost Shrimp should breed in freshwater.
 
aquacutlure said:
I wanted to know if a ghost shrimp will have an appetite for small snails such as mts,baby trapdoors,ramshorns, bladders.

Also if a shrimp has a white worm inside of its body in the ghost shrimp tank at the lfs should i avoid buying from that tank all together or just avoid getting the infected shrimp with the white worm.

Also would they breed in complete freshwater?
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I wouldn't buy any from an infected tank at all. Too risky IMO. They definately eat ramshorns and bladder snails when they are little. The bigger ones are usually safe unless your shrimp are really hungry. I have seen mine picking at the MTS but it looks like they usually give up before they do any damsge. They won't bother trapdoors or briggs that I have seen because they can pull in their doors and close up.
 
ok, i read up on the horsehair worm and it is only harmful to creatures such as grasshopers, coakroaches and shrimp, not harmful from what i read to fish or snails because if it isn't the proper host when in the larval stage before worm stage it will wait till eaten by a proper host or waste away, but i would want healthy shrimp anyways so ill wait till the parasites have left the tank for sure, or treat some no infected shrimp.
 
the horsehair worm is only able to infect inverts , so snails could be at risk, and obviously shrimp. but the odd thing is that horsehair worm normal developes in land dwelling inverts like large insects and when mature enougth the worm leads the insect to water and then crawls out its anus , killing it to live its adult life in water, and lays a gel case of eggs so its eggs could be confused for aquatic snail eggs.The eggs hatch into a cyst stage that gets eaten by the inverts and then the inverts are infected, if ingested by a vertabrate it waits to be craped out or just dies.

because this parasite hasn't left the shrimp at the lfs it could be another type of parasite, iam thinking a round worm of some sort. Its white and 3 inches long curled up inside of the one ghost shrimp at the lfs.

what would be a good preventative treatment for the shrimp if i got shrimp that a worm could not be seen in.
 
If I remember correctly, there's quite a few threads on nanfa.org about Horsehair Worms. It isn't really that uncommon to find them in Ghost Shrimp.
 
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