Help Livestock limitations in high tech tanks?

[Minninips]

It's been many years since I've had a planted tank and it was never high tech/energy. As I start moving from planning to set up of my first real high energy tank I'm starting to think about livestock. I've noticed a couple of times now that it's been mentioned that nerite snails don't survive long in Co2 heavy tanks and it's got me wondering if there's other inhabitants I should consider excluding.

 

[Koan]

nerite snails don't survive long in Co2 heavy tanks

This is actually dependent on your water

If you maintain tank water of sufficient dKH such that your pH does not drop below about 7.2 during the time that the CO2 is on, you can maintain snails just fine.

Calcium carbonate in snail shells does not stay stable below about pH 7.2 , 7.4 and above is better. So if you have naturally hard water this may not be an issue, or if you supplement your water with a carbonate like potassium carbonate K2CO3 to maintain a higher dKH , that will protect the snails.

Similarly shrimp require adequate KH and GH to moderate pH shifts from CO2, maintain their shells and to molt correctly. However their chitin is a protein matrix that is not nearly as sensitive to acidic water as are snail shells.

But what shrimp are sensitive to is any abrupt large shift in dissolved solids, pH or temperature. Shrimp need stability. So if you are going to supplement the KH and GH of your water, you will need to do smaller water changes, very gradually, and make sure the makeup water parameters match with the tank water.

 

[Unexpected]

It kind of depends on the average pH with snails. I've kept Nerites in the past, but over time, their shells would get damaged as my pH was around 4.9. People do keep all that you mention though. The one shrimp I struggled with was Amano shrimp while at those pH levels. They just seem to fall off over time.

All that said, there's no set "can't keep X with CO2". You'd just need to run numbers that favor them more.

 

[snowballs99]

I think aside from nerite snails and rabbit snails in particular most other species will do fine in high tech. Malaysian trumpet snails would probably do fine since they will hide when the CO2 is on anyways.

Neocaridina don't breed much in super high CO2 tho, but they'll still breed.

 

[*Ci*]

There are some fish that require a higher kH/pH than what most plants prefer (African cichlids), some that require higher temperatures to thrive (Discus, German rams) which many plants don’t do well in. Some fish are possibly sensitive to higher co2 levels (Discus, some loaches, otocinclus) and there are the diggers and plant eaters that just mess up a nicely aquacsaped tank (goldfish, some plecos, many cichlids, silver dollars, some loaches).

But, really, as far as fish are concerned, most tropical species are fine, just pick what you like and look up what they need and their behaviour and go from there!

 

[Minninips]

Thank you all for the replies!