# How do you Breed Pond Snails for Puffers?



## MrTOTW (May 28, 2011)

Hey, Arya here 

Lately, I set up a 10G tank with an airstone and gravel and headed over to a LFS to grab some pond snails they had in their fish and plant tanks to feed my 2 DP's. I got about 30 of them, fed them amply with cucumber slices, lettuce, sinking shrimp pellets, vacation feeders and some flake food here and there and before I knew it, Eggs.. EVERYWHERE! 

A week or two later and I found literally dozens of brown specs on the aquarium glass which I knew to be hatched eggs. 

My question is: How do I feed the baby pond snails?

I am worried they won't reach any food and with gravel at the bottom ( my stupid mistake ), I am worried they are gonna get lost and have no hope of finding food and end up dying and rotting in the tank. I panicked and now put almost an entire cucumber worth of slices in there  to give them maximum surface area as well as 2 leaves of lettuce and way too many sinking pellets ( which will probably end up rotting in there, giving my snails ammonia poisoning -_- ) 

Any one have any methods? I figured people feed fry different food than adult fish so perhaps the rule might apply to snails? 

Let me know what you guys think!


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## coldmantis (Apr 5, 2010)

no need to worry, you can feed them anything you want, in a month's time you will have over 1000. dont' worry about ammonia if only ammonia will kill them that would be great but they are hard to kill babies or adults. Pond and ramhorn snails breed constantly once you have them, the only way to get rid of them completely is to clean out your whole tank with boiling water, same for ornaments, substrate and most importantly filter if your using one or they will just come back full force in like 2 months.


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## MrTOTW (May 28, 2011)

Haha! Well don't I feel like an idiot; everyone's trying to get rid of theirs and I'm worrying about mine surviving.  I guess that's good news. My DP's go insane for pond snails, one of them refuses to eat the frozen bloodworms I usually fed before introducing pond snails into his diet. My mom spoiled me growing up and I'm not even that picky!


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## MrTOTW (May 28, 2011)

Btw that's a really nice community tank you've got going on there!


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## coldmantis (Apr 5, 2010)

MrTOTW said:


> Btw that's a really nice community tank you've got going on there!


thanks, foods I have feed my dp when I had them, I have to mention that I kept them with green spotted puffers.

#1 household centipedes (they go ape shit for this stuff)
#2 ponds snails
#3 frozen bloodworms (if they dont' eat it use something to move it around so they think it's alive)
#4 live mealworms (make sure they are alive when you put them in, try to get the smallest ones you can, I think it's like 5 bucks or cheaper for like 100 at big al's)
#5 household spiders
#6 ants

you can also try freeze dried krill my gf's gsp's loves these more then bloodworms.


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## MrTOTW (May 28, 2011)

coldmantis said:


> thanks, foods I have feed my dp when I had them, I have to mention that I kept them with green spotted puffers.
> 
> #1 household centipedes (they go ape shit for this stuff)
> #2 ponds snails
> ...


I'm not sure if the DP's mouths are big enough for the krill. Do you just drop the insects in? I feel like I would have fun doing that   , probably not a good sign haha I am definately going to try those insects, I might not be able to stomach the meal worms  but my friend keeps a crested gecko and occasionally feeds him various insects and worms such as meal worms and I'll ask him for a couple. If I feed my puffers till they look like this: 
http://pufferlist.com/pictures/fish/ctravancoricus.jpg
Would you consider that overfeeding? It's just they look so damn cute when they get all round and they come to the front of the tank and beg.. I just can't resist that.. -_- 
Also whenever I thaw some blood worms, considering I only have 2 puffers its hard to cut off a very small chunk and not end up just getting worm dust  So I cut a bigger chunk but my puffers only eat them when they're freshly thawed, otherwise they just nip at them and spit them out if I keep them in the fridge for even a day. So I end up feeding him once a day, but till they're full, rather than 2-3 times a day like some people say you should.


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## coldmantis (Apr 5, 2010)

I can't see the pic but for the insects I have tweezers for plants that I use and I make sure the puffers sees it in the water before I let it go or I would just hold it and let them eat off the tweezers. for bloodworms I buy the cube ones then I cut it in 4 pieces I don't thaw them I just drop them in and the puffers eat them, they usually dont finnish a quarter cube, as for them eating it and spitting it out well that's how they eat, when you get a chance with the mealworms they don't eat it whole they rip it apart chunk by chunk because they don't like eating the mealworms shell only the meat inside. They usually go for the head first before they eat the rest of the body.
here is a very old video of my dp and gsp when I had them, I just dropped in I think half a cube


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## MrTOTW (May 28, 2011)

Awesome tank, I tried feeding my puffers a dead bug with moderate success, seems they are too accustomed to Bloodworms and Snails though  . I will definitely feed them as treats though. I'll let you know what happened with the Red Claw Shrimp very soon, I've had a long day and I'm about to pass out.


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## coldmantis (Apr 5, 2010)

don't feed them dead ones, they have to be alive.


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## MrTOTW (May 28, 2011)

Sorry, had 2 concerts been extremely busy, I will try live ones  

The other day I placed some canned escargot pieces in my tank ( very tiny pieces ), I know, I know, it's really weird, but my 1 Red Claw Shrimp and my 1 Ghost Shrimp went insane for them. I also tried a tiny piece of smoked oyster rinsed to remove the oils with similar success.


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## Hitch (Apr 26, 2009)

I would avoid feeding your tank with any "processed" foods meant for human consumption. Buy raw saltwater seafoods, boil them a bit and feed them that instead.


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## MrTOTW (May 28, 2011)

Will do!  Thanks for the advice.


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## AquaNekoMobile (Feb 26, 2010)

Here's an idea.. I'm about to work a simple sponge filter into a 5gal tub which is my snail tank right now (pond/ramhorns).

If you've seen my aquaponics thread in the general discussion this is going to combine that with thwe snails for a snailponic setup. Given the snails don't give off as much ammonia but having a cluster in there does build up some nitrates so why not try a 5gal bucket with a 1-2 gal tub on top filled with some gravel and plant something simple inside like umm... cirlantro/basil/etc and have that growbed and plants filter out the nitrates from the snail tub while having the water return clean.

Because the two tubs are seperate the snails won't nom nom on your plants roots.


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