Set up a freshwater aquarium - PEA BB animal.sand.fresh

I've wanted a self sustaining aquarium for a while. After some research, I determined that the best way to set up a tank was to plant it and let it sit ("cycle") for at least 2 months before adding animals to it. So that's what I did.

I took my kids to the store and they each picked out a plant. We got Alternanthera reineckii, Anubias nana, and Dracaena sanderiana. They each picked a rock from the garden and helped me arrange the tank.

A couple months later, the pH, nitrate, and ammonia levels tested at good levels, so we got our animals! Each kid picked out an apple snail, and I also got some small fish and shrimp to keep the algae in check. We got Otocinclus catfish, amano shrimp, and cloud fish.

The final picture is a few weeks after introducing the fish. The catfish did a really good job cleaning up brown algae.

I'm asking my husband (who has been maintaining freshwater aquariums for 20+ years), and to add a crab, you would probably need an above water area. The easiest way is to get a Styrofoam, suction-cupped floating platform.

like this one from Amazon

A more natural way would be to....find non-toxic, floating wood. (He wandered off grumbling that that's probably a pain to do, and this one reason stayed away from keeping freshwater crabs. He did have saltwater crabs for a while). Crabs can't swim, and they like being on land, so they need to crawl up on to land. You want a crab tank, for a crab. Most crab tanks are only 1/3rd full of water, with the gravel or rocks sloping up to a landmass. Like this tank from an Instructable on Fiddler Crab Care



Perhaps there are freshwater crabs that like to be constantly submerged? Maybe we could add that info to the badge bit?

We've been doing some research, and it looks like only Thai Micro crabs and Pom Pom Crabs can be fully aquatic. Pom Pom crabs don't eat fast fish or snails, and so might be good companions in a small aquarium. Both Thai Micro and Pom Pom crabs like lots of places to hide, cling, and crawl around on.

Thai Micro Crab. Click to visit article on aquariumbreeder.com

Pom Pom Crab. Click to visit article on aqauriumbreeder.com

The animal care badge list said "1 of crustacean" not crab, hence the shrimp. I don't think the fish stores near me have crabs.

I checked with Paul today and he found a crab was a great "cleaner upper" for his aquarium.  It looks like there are a number of freshwater crabs for aquariums: https://iere.org/freshwater-crabs/

If you have a petsmart, they sometimes have Red Clawed crabs: https://iere.org/freshwater-crabs/

Looks like they do need a place to get out of the water but a chunk of wood or coral that breaches the surface may do the trick.  Paul's spent 90% of its time on the bottom.

Personally, I would be concerned about adding a snail.  Every aquarium I've had over the years that had "a snail" quickly had about 1000,000 snails.

Snails: depends on if you get a fertilized female or a male and female. I have never had snails persist for long. Currently both my snails are female and haven't laid eggs.

Cleaner uppers: there are many cleaner uppers for aquariums. The catfish , snails, and shrimp I got are all cleaners so there's not really much to clean up anymore. I just wanted to point out that the animal care post (the level above this post) specifies crustaceans, not crabs. And shrimp are crustaceans. I can look into a crab but someone may want to edit one of the posts to prevent confusion.

So I checked with 6 different fish stores locally, and none had suitable crabs. 4 had no crabs at all. One had saltwater crabs, and one Petco had crabs for brackish water (fiddler and red claw). They said they would be fine in freshwater, but when I read about them freshwater will impact their health and shorten their lifespan. (https://www.aquariumsource.com/fiddler-crab/, https://www.aquariumsource.com/red-claw-crab/) I don't feel ethical buying a crab and putting it in conditions I know aren't really suitable for them just for a bit. Plus they burrow which will disturb my plants.

So no bit for me then. But my aquarium is doing really well in the current setup! I recommend otocinclus as great cleaners!

My family has a fresh water tank it had a beautiful ecology for years then one of our plants brought in snails. My solution was to crush every one that was near the water line but that wasn't dealing with the problem fast enough. We moved all the fish to the medical tank put all the plants in a bucket of rain water and near freezing conditions all winter, and restarted the tank in the spring.

Trace Oswald wrote:Personally, I would be concerned about adding a snail.  Every aquarium I've had over the years that had "a snail" quickly had about 1000,000 snails.

The ecology has been off ever since we get huge blooms of some kind of blanket algae all the fish but the plecostomus died. So here's me refurbishing the tank.
But after all the hell we when through to kill snails there's no way my husband will let me add one back.

Since last posting, I've had the same adventures as you Aurora! All due to contaminated plants coming in.

There's many species of snails. I had a pond snail and a ramshorn snail come in with plants. These are hermaphrodites, meaning they can breed with themselves so you only need one for it to start laying eggs. I let the one pond snail live for a bit and when it got to adult size it laid 10 egg sacks (each containing 10s of eggs) in a couple weeks! The newly hatched snails are extremely small and invisible. I took out all the baby snails and all the egg sacks I could find, and fortunately that seems to have controlled them. Right now, I have two frogs and they are supposed to eat snail eggs so I have allowed one pond snail to live, but I'm keeping a close eye on the tank for egg sacks!!

Other snails come in one sex and need the opposite sex to breed. Mystery and apple snails are two of these types. I had two females and they never produced progeny. Also, they lay their eggs above the water line so they're easier to see, if I ever get a male. Apple snails come in many colors, they're big and fun to watch with their long antennae. 🙂🐌 There's also snail species that will eat other snails!

Pest snails (and blue green algae) coming in with plants is why it's recommended to put all new plants in a bleach solution before adding to a tank, to kill hitchhikers. IME snails eat a little algae but not enough to control it. Brown algae is eaten by snails and otocinchus, but not slimy blue green algae. It's tenacious. A little keeps reappearing on a rock in my tank. My tolerance for blue green algae is none, because it's toxic to aquarium life and it spreads very fast. I used the blackout method to knock back the algae, followed by a big water change. Then I applied hydrogen peroxide to spot treat the remaining bits. https://smartaquariumguide.com/blue-green-algae-cyanobacteria/

Due to pest snails and algae coming in with plants, I mostly only go to one aquarium shop that keeps their tanks super clean. They're also the only place in town that have otocinchus. They know what they're doing! I've never had a pest come in with their products.