# Snails



## Fish_Man (Apr 9, 2010)

Hi everyone,

I would like to add a snail or snails to my tanks. Wondering what people would suggest to be added...

I'll do my own research on google but I would like people's personal experiences too!

1) shrimp tank with java moss and some floating hygro - (don't want a snail that will eat my shrimp or the moss  )

2) betta tank 

3) betta tank with otto cat (not sure if I want a snail in this tank since the wafer for the otto cat breaks into little pieces in one area of my tank. would this cause the snail to reproduce a lot? )

Thanks!


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## ksimdjembe (Nov 11, 2006)

ramshorn snails are good. 
are inobtrusive and can tell you if you are overfeeding.


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## Fish_Man (Apr 9, 2010)

ksimdjembe said:


> ramshorn snails are good.
> are inobtrusive and can tell you if you are overfeeding.


how do they tell me if I'm overfeeding?

no harm to my java moss eh? 

how big do they get?


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## ynot (Jan 30, 2010)

You may want to look at apple snails. They do grow fairly large. As they lay their eggs above the water line you would be able to control their reproduction rate. I have a couple of snails with two otos, african dwarf frog, and one betta. Their diet is supplemented with blanched cucumbers. They also eat the sinking frog bites.

Have fun with your selection.


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## Fish_Man (Apr 9, 2010)

ynot said:


> You may want to look at apple snails. They do grow fairly large. As they lay their eggs above the water line you would be able to control their reproduction rate. I have a couple of snails with two otos, african dwarf frog, and one betta. Their diet is supplemented with blanched cucumbers. They also eat the sinking frog bites.
> 
> Have fun with your selection.


fairly large eh.... how big? 3"?? does your betta eat the eggs?


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## ynot (Jan 30, 2010)

Fish_Man said:


> fairly large eh.... how big? 3"?? does your betta eat the eggs?


Have a quick look at applesnail.net for all the information you need on apple snails. The largest I have so far was a 2" yellow apple snail since expired when it exited the tank (via the return for the hang over back water filter). In my case, two clusters of snail eggs were laid on the aquarium hood near the lights well out of reach of the betta. I discovered the eggs several days after they laid. They dried out with no known offspring.


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## AquariAM (Jan 28, 2010)

Fish_Man said:


> how do they tell me if I'm overfeeding?


Because there are thousands of them.

I think it was a joke. They are a pest and reach a few mm. Sometimes you get a freak 1 cm ramshorn.


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## E-J (Aug 27, 2009)

I have lots of apple snails if you want some of those. They do a good cleaning job.


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## AquariAM (Jan 28, 2010)

E-J said:


> I have lots of apple snails if you want some of those. They do a good cleaning job.


 ..............


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## E-J (Aug 27, 2009)

Thats rude..


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## AquariAM (Jan 28, 2010)

E-J said:


> Thats rude..


Apple snails are as far away from being a good cleaner of anything as it gets. They'll eat green algae. That's it. And not reliably. Canaliculata will eat tonnes of it but they also inhale your plants. The amount of food they need to be really healthy is equivalent to about 10 2" giant danios for one 2.5" apple snail.


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## Philip.Chan.92 (Apr 25, 2010)

snails are good for algae and such but make sure you want to keep them for a long term, they are soooo hard to get rid of and can destroy ur plants quite easily.


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## TBemba (Jan 11, 2010)

Get a Nerite snail they are plant friendly you need a pair to breed they are not easy to breed in captivity (I am not sure anyone has bred them). They love algae and come in some cool patterns. I have 9 tigers  cheap like $1.99 on special. Make sure you have algae before you get one and depends on the size of the tank. But I know they will eat Cucumber and algae wafers.


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## Fish_Man (Apr 9, 2010)

TBemba said:


> Get a Nerite snail they are plant friendly you need a pair to breed they are not easy to breed in captivity (I am not sure anyone has bred them). They love algae and come in some cool patterns. I have 9 tigers  cheap like $1.99 on special. Make sure you have algae before you get one and depends on the size of the tank. But I know they will eat Cucumber and algae wafers.


they look pretty neat! where'd you get them?


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## igor.kanshyn (Jan 14, 2010)

E-J said:


> I have lots of apple snails if you want some of those. They do a good cleaning job.


There are different types of apple snails. But they are usually quite big and eat live plants if they can.


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## TBemba (Jan 11, 2010)

Fish_Man said:


> they look pretty neat! where'd you get them?


I got mine from Ba's they usually have them. i got mine there but in the GTA man you should be able to find some cool Nerites. mine where on sale so I figured what the hay. It maybe a year before they can make a dent in the 90 

They stay small but will bail on the tank if they get hungry.


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## Fish_Man (Apr 9, 2010)

TBemba said:


> I got mine from Ba's they usually have them. i got mine there but in the GTA man you should be able to find some cool Nerites. mine where on sale so I figured what the hay. It maybe a year before they can make a dent in the 90
> 
> They stay small but will bail on the tank if they get hungry.


ah bail on the tank


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## AquariAM (Jan 28, 2010)

Nerite and Assassin snails are fun. I have two Assassin snails and they have grown a fair bit on a diet of pellets and frozen shrimp. They are called Assassin because they eat other snails, such as ramshorns. Menagerie told me that they are safe with nerites. I have no personal experience with them together. The nerites are beautiful and inobtrusive with the downside that they lay several small white eggs which can be difficult to remove from glass and almost impossible to remove from rocks and other rough surfaces.


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## igor.kanshyn (Jan 14, 2010)

*Medium size snails can press small plants badly*

Be careful with big or medium size snails, like nerite, if you are going to keep small carpeting plants. Snails clean everything from algae, they do. But they will also destroy new blades and small leaves while snails eat algae from them.

A week ago I moved nerite snail out of a tank, because they press and graze my dwarf hairgrass. They do well with vallisneria, red nesaea and java moss. But they press riccia and dwarf hairgrass badly. This will not be a problem if you have a mature tank and only several snails. I'm just growing this hairgrass and snails are obstacle.

Look at the picture. It's a usual snail's way over a grass. All small blades on their way were eaten


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## AquaNekoMobile (Feb 26, 2010)

ksimdjembe said:


> ramshorn snails are good.
> are inobtrusive and can tell you if you are overfeeding.


My only experience with snails are MTS and ramhorn snails. My MTS population crashed but the ramhorns survived.

Ramhorn snails max at ~2cm. I have a varied population of ramhorn snails I have breed in buckets from max size to just born. If you have 1" pipes you don't have to worry about a ramhorn clogging the pipe.

They do a good job removing algae off the tank sides and clean up the bottom of the tank. I think the reason why they are considered a pest is because they if well fed can breed like rabbits. I find that at around 1/2cm the ramhorns if they breed will give about ~3 eggs. Full max size ones can give ~10eggs. They are hemerphrotides (sp) in that they are dual sexed and do not require another snail to mate to produce eggs. However in my experience the warmer the tank the sooner the eggs will hatch. In a ~15C temp tank the eggs can take I think a month to hatch while in ~23-25C it's ~2-3 weeks before the eggs hatch so while they may breed like rabbits they are not live breeding snails so you can tell if there are eggs by the yellow jelly and scrap it off and suck it out.

IIRC they don't start breeding till ~1/2cm which could take about a month and a half to get to that size from a newborn. In a small tank 20-30gal or less it's easy to find them and pluck them out. In a larger tank it's not as easy as more places to hide and well you'll be up to the shoulders reaching in to find them. Show up before your light timers turn on and you'll see them near around half to the top of the tank if they're on the tank walls and you can pluck them out that way. I've got j.moss in one of my tanks and about 6 ramhorn~1cm and my j.moss is not stripped bare at all. Because of their size they can hang on plants to take the algae off without being weighed down and falling off.

If you get any hatched babies you don't want just finger squish them as thier shells are no thin they'll die right then. If you don't want to be the finger squishing killer then have a pea puffer do the job then.  I find if decide to have some hatched new ramhorn snails I'll just remove as many visable larger ramhorn snails and not worry as the babies would take a while before they even reach possible breeding size so ample time for me to squish or pluck them out as they get larger.

I think the comment about a guage of overfeeding is that any excess food the ramhorns would gladly eat it up as supplimental food to their already algae eating job in the tank so a ramhorn at breeding size with a full belly of food many breed and breed more I think is what that comment meant. Seeing as I only have them in the 10gal it's easy to find them and pluck them out and put into an ice cream bucket to breed some more later for other uses (still want that pea puffer one day  ) and pluck a leaf off my hydroponic tomato plant for them to nosh on in there.

BTW ramhorns do any excellent job in my tomato stem cuttings in water when there was a blue-green algae from the bright lights while waiting for the cuttings to give roots. They did not eat the roots but just grazed off the algae. 

With all that said I don't hate them as they are useful and they are manageable to keep them from overbreeding. Now if I had a 40gal+ tank it would be a different story as yes I can see them being an over running pest.

EDIT:

The only time my j.moss was stripped bare to strings was when I had about 10-15 ramhorns starved in a container and I put some j.moss in thinking the j.moss would grow while the snails cleaned any algae build up. Only if you run out of supplimental food or algae do they start taking little nibbles out of your plants. If that happens pluck as many out of the tank and keep say 1-2 or just the babies in there while the algae builds up again.


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## AquaNekoMobile (Feb 26, 2010)

AquariAM said:


> Apple snails are as far away from being a good cleaner of anything as it gets. They'll eat green algae. That's it. And not reliably. Canaliculata will eat tonnes of it but they also inhale your plants. The amount of food they need to be really healthy is equivalent to about 10 2" giant danios for one 2.5" apple snail.


How did you come to that food ratio? Someone lab tested that?


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## AquariAM (Jan 28, 2010)

AquaNekoMobile said:


> How did you come to that food ratio? Someone lab tested that?


 . I've had giant danios and I've had apple snails. 
You don't need a 'lab' to realize how much X eats and that Y eats 10X what X eats do you?


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## BettaBeats (Jan 14, 2010)

snails such as apples and mystery snails will need calcium in the water. Mystery snails are good because they eat a lot and grow pretty rapidly. Nice to look at, but make sure you have a tank lid or they can climb out.


I havent had much luck acclimating nerites


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## AquariAM (Jan 28, 2010)

BettaBeats said:


> snails such as apples and mystery snails will need calcium in the water. Mystery snails are good because they eat a lot and grow pretty rapidly. Nice to look at, but make sure you have a tank lid or they can climb out.
> 
> I havent had much luck acclimating nerites


I've never had a nerite die. Might have gotten a bad batch. Those Zebra Nerites are usually about as tough as a 'no fishing' statue.. You're stuck with them.


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## KhuliLoachFan (Mar 8, 2008)

Those little Ramshorns are only a pest if you haven't got a use for them. When you keep puffers, they are the ideal live, free food. When you get the big ones, it's the one you feed the puffer as a "reward for being an extra extra cute puffer".


W


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## AquariAM (Jan 28, 2010)

Big Al's Scarborough say they will be carrying Tetra bottom feeder tabs full time now. These are spectacular snail food and all snails will take them. The first ingredient is skim milk powder. It produces fantastic growth in snail shells with no need to add calcium to the water. I had an apple snail named Fuzzles with the most perfect thick shell I've ever seen who used to come to the surface to take the stuff from my hand. It makes absolutely perfect shells. It's in a little yellow container they hope to have it by Thursday and it will now be a regular product at the scarb location AFAIK.


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