finally getting shellies

[wrs]

after a bunch of guppies got sucked into the filter ivbe decided to finally get some shellies for my tank. A 10 for now but possibly a 20 in the next month because a relative keeps asking about what would we do with a 55 gallon, and im hoping that we get one.

My lfs has a bunch and they are really cheep, the only think that I dont have are shells yet, not sure if they sell them, and crushed coral. it has a sand bottem now. would the crushed coral be nessesary? i know like months ago we went over this, but its been a long time and i cant remeber any of that stuff from back then.

 

[freddyk]

Crushed coral has the buffering capabilities, but sand is actually the best choice of substrate for these avid diggers. If your lfs has apple snaild tanks you can probably get them to give you empty ones from it. Escargot shells also work well. What kind of shelldwellers are they? They can have slightly different requirements when it comes to shells.

 

[guppymonkey]

You are lucky! I can't find the shell dwellers in my area. I might consider getting some for my next tank if I can get some apple snails and grow them big enough for the shellies. What would work with apple snails shells?

 

[freddyk]

Any would work well with those shells, but naturally larger species would need larger shells. Their needs also gear toward the amount of shells. Brevis, for example, come from areas where shells are sparse, and pairs have even adapted to sharing them. Multifasciatus, on the other hand, live where shells are dense, and they'll make use of as many as you provide, clustering them together as nests.