Tank Mate

[PrairieSunflower]

At the moment my betta has one horned nerrite as a tank mate.  I consider myself lucky that it is a male as I have never had eggs anywhere... so I assume that means my snail is a male.... Thing is... it never cleans the surface of the leaves... well, actually it never cleans the TOPS of the leaves, I have spotted it cleaning the bottoms... which really don't need it.
 
Anyhow... I thought horned nerrites were small enough to do the leaves... but... I guess maybe a 10 gallon tank is too big for one little snail to maintain and he never gets that far.  I don't have a huge problem with algae, just a tiny "film" over the leaves.
 
So... what is my best option....
 
1) Do I get another horned nerrite and hope it is a male as well?
 
2) Do I get some sort of shrimp?  My other tank has amano but... I really like them and am really wary to try putting one of those in to see how it goes....  I don't want them eaten!
 
 
Or... is there another option I am not thinking about?  I don't want anything big so don't really want to add any fish... I think all fish that clean algae need to be in groups anyway and I don't want that many fish added at all (would add a group of shrimp if that was the best idea).
 
Thoughts?
 
My betta, so far, shows no aggression whatsoever, he hasn't even flared a single time since coming home.  (He flared at my finger in the store).

 

[DerpPH]

At the moment my betta has one horned nerrite as a tank mate.  I consider myself lucky that it is a male as I have never had eggs anywhere... so I assume that means my snail is a male.... Thing is... it never cleans the surface of the leaves... well, actually it never cleans the TOPS of the leaves, I have spotted it cleaning the bottoms... which really don't need it.
 
Anyhow... I thought horned nerrites were small enough to do the leaves... but... I guess maybe a 10 gallon tank is too big for one little snail to maintain and he never gets that far.  I don't have a huge problem with algae, just a tiny "film" over the leaves.
 
So... what is my best option....
 
1) Do I get another horned nerrite and hope it is a male as well?
 
2) Do I get some sort of shrimp?  My other tank has amano but... I really like them and am really wary to try putting one of those in to see how it goes....  I don't want them eaten!
 
 
Or... is there another option I am not thinking about?  I don't want anything big so don't really want to add any fish... I think all fish that clean algae need to be in groups anyway and I don't want that many fish added at all (would add a group of shrimp if that was the best idea).
 
Thoughts?
 
My betta, so far, shows no aggression whatsoever, he hasn't even flared a single time since coming home.  (He flared at my finger in the store).

nerite snails are both male and female and they don't mate in a freshwater setup
 
Amanos are quick shrimp and will not be eaten if given ample hiding spots
 
My bet would be on Amano shrimp

 

[PrairieSunflower]

Maybe I will do that then... buy some more shrimp and try them out in there... if it goes badly I can attempt to rescue them and move survivors to my other tank.

 

[Lillefishy]

Nerite snails are not hermaphrodites, they need a male & female to reproduce.
The eggs need brackish water to hatch so even though nerites lay eggs in freshwater you won't get baby snails.

 

[bluesword23516]

I would try the shrimp. My female betta is fairly aggressive, but when she had shrimp she didn't bother them. 

 

[Mamashack]

I have amano shrimp in with my betta and he's never attacked them. he might give chase if they get up close and personal, but they are much quicker and seem to ping to the other side of the tank with no probelm at all.

 

[PrairieSunflower]

Ah!  That makes me feel better, amanos would be my preferred thing to add.

 

[PrairieSunflower]

Right... I decided to have some courage and take my largest amano shrimp from my other tank and move it into my betta's tank as a "guinea pig".  It was a tense first meeting.  The shrimp doesn't seem to have any sense of potential danger and was happy to just go about eating... I've never seen my betta go so intense though and followed it so waveringly that I nearly had a panic that he was about to attack the shrimp... but just before I panicked to the point of grabbing the net and removing the shrimp again... suddenly they were both fine and have been fine since....
 
SO... I shall be off to the LFS to up my number of shrimp  I am going to add 3 more to my betta's tank and buy an extra to replace the big one that moved out of my bigger tank into the betta tank.
 
Yay!  Happy!
 
Also, my big shrimp did a rather impressive job cleaning up the plants in my betta's tank overnight all on its own!

 

[PrairieSunflower]

I'm starting to think my larger tank would probably look like a nightmare if I didn't have shrimp.
 
I am mightily impressed with what one shrimp has done to my betta's tank in less than 24 hours!!
 
In this time ONE full grown amano shrimp has cleared... seriously cleared!!  all the brown fuzzy algae off 3 anuibias nanas (old ones so of significant size) and two decent sized amazon sword plants... it removed so much algae that it was floating all over the tank and I had to do a 95% water change to suck it all out and clear the water.  Since the water change (earlier today)... it has cleared a good proportion of the rest of the algae.  Very impressed!

 

[Freedom]

Hmm I may need to consider an amano, based on this report!  WOW, isn't that lovely!
 
Will you leave him there, or move him back and just use him for clean up once a month?  He heee, be careful, he may demand union wages!

 

[PrairieSunflower]

All is going well so I am thinking to buy the shrimp new companions and they stay there permanently.  My light is a bit on the too bright side and the tank only takes one kind of bulb so the shrimp will keep things beautiful.