When most people plan out their aquarium, they also think about the tank mates they want for their fish. Ghost shrimp always make this list because of their ability to entertain and clean up any algae, food waste, and dead fish in the tank. But will ghost shrimp eat snail eggs, too?
Ghost shrimp can eat snail eggs. They’re opportunistic feeders capable of eating everything inside an aquarium. However, the eggs have to be low enough or on the tank’s surface for the ghost shrimps to find them while feasting on leftovers.
That said, these shrimps don’t eat snail eggs fast enough to control the population of snails in the long run. Read on to find out what ghost shrimp normally eat and whether or not you should keep these shrimps and snails in the same tank. Let’s dive in.
What Do Ghost Shrimp Normally Eat?
As a disclaimer, ghost shrimps aren’t predators. They won’t go out seeking your snail eggs or snails with the sole purpose of eating them. However, they’re natural scavengers, meaning they can and will eat anything that pleases their taste buds.
Ghost shrimp in a fish tank normally eat algae, dead leaves falling from the live plants, and tiny chunks of food left over by the other fish. Suppose any fish or snails die. Ghost shrimp will feed on their carcasses — they don’t eat live beings. These shrimp also love to lick a snail’s slime.
Unfortunately, because of their opportunistic nature, if a ghost shrimp stumbles upon something and decides to taste it, it may end up eating all of it. A good example of this is when the shrimp licks off snail slime and ends up eating the entire snail. Snails produce more slime as a protective mechanism, making shrimps eat more.
In the same way, if the shrimp comes across a bunch of snail eggs, they’ll surely have a snack. Interestingly, snails also eat shrimp eggs, so it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.
Should You Keep Snails and Ghost Shrimp Together?
The answer to this depends on what your end goal is. As discussed above, ghost shrimp and snails eat each other’s eggs. The difference is that ghost shrimp are faster and more efficient than snails.
You shouldn’t keep snails and ghost shrimp together if you’re trying to breed many snails. However, having both snails and ghost shrimp in a customarily kept fish tank is beneficial. They both help clean up the fish tank and add a bit of bioload.
Therefore, snails and ghost shrimp in the same tank help keep the water in the right state and the plants well fertilized.
In cases where snails overpopulate the aquarium, adding a host of ghost shrimps can control this population with time. However, a faster solution would be adding an assassin snail to kill and eat all the snails. So if you’re worried that your ghost shrimp will get rid of all the snails in the tank, this isn’t likely because snails reproduce faster than shrimps can eat their eggs.
Will Ghost Shrimp and Snails Compete for Food?
Ghost shrimp and snails can compete for food because they both like to eat pretty much the same things. Their job in the aquarium is to eat what the fish leave behind and clean up their mess.
Interestingly, snails and ghost shrimps don’t like to eat floating food, so they’ll scavenge around the bottom of the tank or the sides to find algae, food particles, and dead matter.
The only difference is that ghost shrimp are faster in everything they do. These shrimp swim faster and eat faster, so snails cannot compete — it won’t be an issue if both species have enough food to devour. But when the shrimp population grows, the shrimp will eat all the food, leaving snails with nothing until they get malnourished and die.
If you worry that your ghost shrimp will end up eating all the food and leave your snails with very little food, make sure you watch your shrimp population. You don’t want to end up with a tank with no snails at all, although that’s unlikely, considering snails reproduce quickly. Even so, you should monitor your tank from time to time.
Final Thoughts
Well, if you’ve been wondering whether ghost shrimp eat snail eggs, then you have your answer now. These shrimps will devour snail eggs if they encounter them on their daily path. It may not happen naturally. That’s because snails tend to lay eggs on higher ground and hide them.
If you want to control the tank’s snail population, you might have to encourage the shrimp to eat the snail eggs. Move the snail eggs to the surface where ghost shrimp are likely to find them or reduce the food you put inside the fish tank.