Hi there,
So I had two little feeder snails (along with a few ghost shrimp) to help clean the tank and entertain Sedge.
Sedge eventually figured out how to capture the shrimp, although it took a couple weeks.
One of the snails was missing from it's shell within 24 hours of a partial water change. I thought the water change might have weakened or killed the snail and assumed Sedge ate the dead snail (or possibly killed it, but it doesn't seem like he figured that out yet).
So that was a couple weeks ago. The second snail was still hanging around. After a while it got kind of quiet and hid a lot, but I wasn't sure if that was because Sedge was trying harder to hunt it. But then, one morning I got a wonderful worm-crawling out of eye surprise. I 'humanely euthanized' the snail (read: quick death with large rock) to put it out of it's misery and so that Sedge would not eat the parasite.
Now my questions are:
1) Should I be worried that the first snail had this parasite (lungworm? I have read that is what this common parasite might be?) and that Sedge ate it? Sedge is acting fine currently.
2) I would like to get some mystery snails or something to help with algae and because they are a fun addition to the tank. Plus, Sedge doesn't eat them, at least not right away. But is there any way I can get parasite-free snails? Have others here had a lot of snails?
Thanks as usual!!
M