rams horn snails

[neilsc]

hi Folks,
Would you guys and gals recommend getting a few rams horn snails for a 1month old walstad set up to remove the 'malm' that is beginning to appear?
I am a little concerned they might take over.
Look forward to hearing your views
N

 

[bazz]

As long as the water parameters are fine, then I would.
Cheers!

 

[Wookii]

Can definitely recommend some Ramshorns - their population may boom a little to start with as the first round of babies appear, but they’ll self regulate over time based on the availability of food.

 

[The grumpy one]

Yes. Do it. you will be very please with the result. Get some bladder snails as well. They are smaller and can get into those difficult places.

 

[louis_last]

What am I missing here? I would say ramshorns are the very last thing you would want to introduce to a tank to deal with mulm. 90+% of all the mulm in my tanks is probably from ramshorn snails that produce far larger poo than any of my fish. They're good for green fuzz algae on the glass in my experience but everything I've ever seen leads me to believe that adding ramshorns to a tank can only dramatically increase the amount of mulm present. I'd say any type of shrimp would be much better as they disturb the mulm and break it up into smaller particles that get suspended in the water and carried to the filter.

 

[_Maq_]

90+% of all the mulm in my tanks is probably from ramshorn snails that produce far larger poo than any of my fish.

Snails' feces contain relatively few nitrogen, and other nutrients in high demand (phosphorus, micros). Therefore their attractiveness to microbes depends on general balance of nutrients in the tank.
Such is the theory. In practice, I too often wonder why snails' feces do or do not disappear rapidly. It's an issue which we don't completely understand and control, yet.

 

[seedoubleyou]

This begs the question I’ve always had, are snails actually beneficial to a clean up crew.
Do they actually add anything to an aquarium?
In reef keeping, certain species are crucial to the tanks “up keep”
But when I’ve kept snails in a planted aquarium, I’ve never truly felt any benefit to having them, other than as a food source for when I kept various pufferfish.

 

[dw1305]

Hi all

........Do they actually add anything to an aquarium?
In reef keeping, certain species are crucial to the tanks “up keep”. But when I’ve kept snails in a planted aquarium, I’ve never truly felt any benefit to having them

A massive benefit for me, both as detrivores and as a mechanism for encouraging and maintaining microbial diversity <"https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1218525110">*.

*McFall-Ngai, M., Hadfield, M.G., Bosch, T.C., Carey, H.V., Domazet-Lošo, T., Douglas, A.E., Dubilier, N., Eberl, G., Fukami, T., Gilbert, S.F. and Hentschel, U., (2013). "Animals in a bacterial world, a new imperative for the life sciences". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(9), pp.3229-3236.

Cheers Darrel