If you can't beat em....keep em!

[hayley-jane]

I feel so guilty when I flush the snails in my axie tank - so I'm keeping them

I've got a little tank set up with some plants for them to muncherty cruncherty on. So just a few questions...

1 - How big do water snails grow? (the horn shaped shell ones)

2 - Water plants - does the whole plant need to be submerged or just the roots?

3 - Do the snails just eat the alage from the plants or the plant too?

4 - Do the snails need a specific temperature range? Or is room temp (22C roughly) okay?

Thank you

When I get my camera back tomorrow I will post some pictures of the snail set-up lol

 

[rheann]

I don't know much about snails, but I have a few in my tank and these are the reasons: I had a hydra infestation that was so bad that the glass looked completly frosted. I also had flat worms in the tank. A few nails ended up in the tank, probably from some live plants i put in and after a period of time i noticed that the glass was clean and free of hydra and flat worms! It was the snails that had taken care of those pests, and they don't cause any problems for me. They eat the pests in the tank, and they also eat the algae and keep the tank clean other than the strings of poo they leave around which needs to be vacuumed out. I don't mind the clean up as long as they keep the pests away. I am not sure what type of snails they are. They are really small and they stay small. The other snail I have is a big cream and pink colored Apple snail who also does a very good job of cleaning the tank and two otocinclus which also contribute to the tank cleaning. I put in green beans for them to eat and so the snails can have food too. Cucumber slices also work but they float at the surface so need to be ankered down by rocks. I just let them float at the surface and the snails and fish find their way to the cucumbers

Right now I don't have any live plants in my tank. I just have plastic ones.

 

[pete]

If you have Ramshorn snails from your plants, then you don't have to worry about your plants getting eaten. They're pretty useful for keeping the algae down, and they only eat algae. If you got another species like a pond snail, then they may eat the plants. Different species of snails get different sizes. My ramshorn snails don't get much bigger than a half an inch shell. Your best bet maybe to Google aquarium snails to learn more about what species of snail you have.

 

[hayley-jane]

Thank you

I'm still gonna keep them separate because I'm struggling to keep the nitrates in my tank down at the moment and their poop isn't helping.

 

[hayley-jane]

The snail tank

 

[hayley-jane]

This is the type of snails I have in the tank - they came from Elsa's tank.

Called Stagnalis apparently. Pretty shell though