And are the sexy shrimp any safer?
The original idea was to keep the fry in the 1 gallon, but my cycling 1 gallon looks like it is about to crash already (I am doing daily water changes to try to avoid this) and I am worried about keeping the fry in it (my 5 gallon on the other hand is doing great) - so if I can keep the fry with the parents in the 5 gallon, definitely that would be ideal.
The problem is the hydroid scare, panacur killing the worms, and cleaners that could kill the fry. It sounds like the old fox, chicken, and feed riddle.
And I can always move dangerous cleaners to one tank while I am expecting fry - and it takes 3 months for fry to mature while seahorses are still having fry every 10 days, meaning at any point of time I am going to have fry. Or is that unusual? I'm assuming I'd have 8-10 adults in the tank, by the way.
One way I would think of avoiding this is gutload the nasties to the point where I could see them, kill them completely off with panacur, and then introduce the snails during a safe period. I just don't know when that safe period would be, and if it's 2 years like someone mentioned, that can't work, and I'm going to have to find a fry friendly crustacean or a method of cleaning the substrate myself - the live rock and sponge filter will help with the water quality - but in a 5 gallon tank, I'd like to have a fry friendly bottom feeder as a safety net.
Oh and let me add one more point here - if it takes fry 3 months to mature into adults - what survival rate of the brood can I expect during this time with a peppermint shrimp or sexy shrimp or even tiny hermit crab for that matter?
EDIT: I can't believe I didn't think of this! So someone had the idea of keeping the peppermint shrimp in a breeding trap while there were fry - What about the other way around?! Having the fry in the breeding trap with like a plastic grass ornament in the breeding trap for them to hitch onto and keep the peppermint shrimp cleaning the bottom of the tank? Could this work, or is there some reason we are not keeping the fry in a breeding trap in the first place? I used to do this with my guppies all the time and it worked great. Once they were big enough I let them out with the other small fish and there was no need for a fry tank. Not only that but the survival rate was incredibly high - I lost maybe two compared to half the brood when I tried to house them on their own.
2nd EDIT: I think I might have found my first hitchikers from the rock. I'm going to do some research and find out what it is. One is this little white bug looking thing. It scurries quickly and it looks kind of like a white rolly-polly. The other, I'm not sure if it's algae from the rock (it did have a little algae on it) or if it's a type of hydroid. The panacur is in the mail, so I'm going to treat the tank when it gets here.
. and yes sexy shrimp dont hurt fries.
