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Snails - love or hate them?

haha bad timing if you read my post just now .. but i love snails

had/have some salawesi elephant snails which are very cool
some blue ramshorns and mts ... think they look great working there way around the tank :thumbup:
 
I was quite taken with the ramshorns when I added them, but now they're multiplying at a ridiculous rate and I'm having to fish them out on a daily basis and destroy egg patches just to keep some semblence of balance in my tank.

I'd add assassins but I've been reading and understand they take cherry red shrimp too :(.

In short, my experience with snails is not great!
 
I like snails, I've got a horned & zebra nerite. Loads of ramshorns too, they do a great job of keeping the smaller plants clean.

But again, they breed at a ridiculous rate!

My tank actually just houses cleaners, RCS.. Otos and snails! MTS, Red and Brown Ramshorns and Nerites.
 
Assassin sails are a bit of a mystery for me, do they really wipe out every single snail in your tank & then starve to death?
This is what you can read, but, I wonder how many assassin snails you would have to introduce for that event to happen?
Do assassin snails breed in a average planted tank?
What if you only introduced one assassin snail, would it still kill every other snail in your tank? surely not!?
 
Hate common/pond snails and nerites- stupid white eggs!!
Love ramshorns with barbs, number never gets out of control.. only really see 15-20 at a time but 50+ shells in the bottom.
Ive found assassins good at keeping numbers low, 4 or 5 seemed to stop outbreaks in 250ltr but no use to add once outbreak has happened.

Either way i can live without them happily :)
 
Hi all,
Like Ramshorns and MTS, but I can't keep many of the others like Assassins because my water is too soft.

If you have too many ramshorns, just crush them, nearly all fish will feed on them, and you also can remove them by baiting with courgette etc.

cheers Darrel
 
Kept ramshorn by accident, coming into my tanks as hitch hikers! Had MTS which bred like mad and also nerites and apples. The MTS caused no problems at all. I found that the nerites layed the white eggs on mass initially, but then just stopped. I can't give any reason for this. I've had apple snails breed several times in my tank.
 
I know MTS overpopulation comes from overfeeding fish. Don't know what the story is with the ramshorns though, they just breed & breed. I never put any kind of food in my tank, just a shelled pea or two once every 2 weeks.
 
KrisHumphreys1991 said:
I know MTS overpopulation comes from overfeeding fish.

Funny thing is I feed very sparingly, yet still lots. However i had the tank fairly heavily stocked with rainbows so I imagine the fish waste alone sustained the population. I had no idea how many a tank can hold until I stripped it down for a house move. As soon as the water level was reduced below the top of the substrate they began a mass exodus :wideyed: ! Never saw much of them at night the few times I checked. They did however sort out a few anoxic areas of gravel; the reason I added them.
 
foxfish said:
Assassin sails are a bit of a mystery for me, do they really wipe out every single snail in your tank & then starve to death?
This is what you can read, but, I wonder how many assassin snails you would have to introduce for that event to happen?
Do assassin snails breed in a average planted tank?
What if you only introduced one assassin snail, would it still kill every other snail in your tank? surely not!?
I ended up with lots of pest snails (I think some kind of ramshorns) into my tank as hitch hikers on plants, so I got 4 assassins couple of months ago (my tank is 60l and fairly heavily planted), they have done a fab job in cleaning my tank up of pest snails and have also started to breed themselves. I must now have about 30-40 assassins at any one time. I also regularly sell them off.
 
I had 1 nerite snail and it was fantastic. Never laid eggs some people regret about :)

I also freshwater limpets (Ferrissia sp.) which were introduced untintentionally (perhaps with some plants). I like them as well. They are really tiny (3-4 mm max) and the population seems stable (not that many). They help with the algae cleaning.

cheers

GM
 
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