snails starving in my Goldfish tanks

mtpvteye

I have Cory Cats. plecos and Olive Nerite snails, Rams Horn snails and the blue and gold mystery snails. Theses are all fairly new additions to my 6 Goldfish aquariums and things have been okay until now. A few of my corys and snails have died. The Gold fish are hogs and love algea wafers too. I try and hide them but they destroy the tank to get to them. Its kinda funny but i want my new additions to survive. I watch my amonia but am scared of uneaten food. my goldies are exotics. by the way i did this to i didnt have to scrape algae and man its been awsome! i know i shouldnt intermix species but any advice would be great!

Lupin

Mixing snails and Goldfish will work as long as you make sure the snails get their fair share of food. Unfortunately, nerites eat solely algae and are extremely difficult to supplement with other foods. I mix my nerites and apple snails with my Goldfish. I have oranda, watonai, fantail, ryukin and pearlscale. The apple snails get sinking pellets while I attempt to distract the Goldfish extra pellets. It works for me. As for the nerites, the algae grows rampantly and still provides the nerites enough food to eat. If this is an issue to you, try culturing algae yourself using a bucket full of water, rocks, and a handful of fish food for ammonia source and placed under direct sunlight.

iamntbatman

At what temperature do you keep these Goldfish? Corydoras catfish and plecos are tropical species that need warm water (upper seventies to low eighties) but Goldfish are coldwater species that need cooler water. They shouldn't be kept together for this reason. If the tanks are coldwater tanks the cories might be dying due to the low water temperatures.

Lupin

Jim, I do not see anything wrong with his stocks assuming his Goldfish are "fancies", not "pond" types such as comets, shubs and common Goldfish. Fancy Goldfish need their temperature a tad warmer than the pond types at 72-76 degrees. A lot of plecos such as bristlenose plecos and whiptails will work just fine. A lot of corydoras also prefer subtropical temperature range which the fancy Goldfish fortunately are categorized under as well. As long as the bottom dwellers are not being deprived of their share of food, the combination will work just fine.