Lost another one

Today I found the mostly consumed remains of one of my albino cory cats.  I'm not sure what killed him, there was no ammonia reading in the tank, though I forgot to check the other levels before I did a water change.  In any event, the baby snails in the tank are starting to become a real problem - they're getting big enough to clearly see what color their shells are, especially the ones that were feeding off the dead fish before I removed him from the tank.  Perhaps it is the competition for food that lost me a cory cat?  I ordered a couple of assassin snails online today, assuming they arrive ok, I shall put one in the tank and see if it takes care of the over-population

Sumo's New Tank

Yesterday I set up a new tank for Sumo the betta.  It's a 5.5 gallon kit from Petsmart with a power filter and incandescent light in the hood.  I added Super Naturals sand substrate, bamboo, marimo moss balls, the Balinese lantern "house" from his original tank, and a Buddha statue.  One of the bamboo curls was from his original tank, and I also used some of his water to set up the tank.  Once it was all set up, I popped an old filter cartridge from the other betta's tank behind the new filter and put in a small 10 watt heater that I had.  It's supposedly too small for a 5 gallon tank but the tank still reached 80 degrees overnight and went up to 82 today once I had the light on for awhile.  Today I removed the old filter as the water had become a bit cloudy and added some water clarifier.  A few hours later I used a floating magnet tank cleaner to sweep off sand particles from the front of the glass.  Then I turned off the heater and added Sumo to the tank, carefully floating him in a bag for a while to get used to the warmer temperature.  I've never seen a betta swim so much!  Whether it's the warmer temp, the more room, or just a new space to explore, he seems to really like his new home.  I will definitely be getting a 5.5 gallon tank for Indy as well when I move.

The Downside of Apple Snails

Last night I found the two apple snails in Indy's tank stuck together as in the picture above.  According to similar pictures and descriptions I found online, it seems the snails decided to be fruitful and multiply.  This is a real problem in a 2.5 gallon tank because there's just not enough room for tons of snail babies.  I separated them and put the smaller one, I guess it's a female, in Sumo's 3 gallon tank.  I will just have to watch carefully for egg clusters and hope I can catch and remove any before they hatch.

Unfortunately when I had two snails in my 10 gallon, I did not know the snails decided to reproduce until one day (surprise!) I found 10-20 little white dots, about the size of tapioca, that turned out to be baby snails.  The amount of salt in the tank now has proved insufficient to kill them, and the cory cats don't seem to eat them.  I think it's time to get an assassin snail and see if that will solve the problem before they overrun the tank.