Apple Snail

[crouton_cc]

I have a apple snail (pretty sure thats the kind) from a pet store, needless to say the staff didn't know their hand from their foot.

I have a few ?'s that I am getting conflicting answers from on the NET. Maybe someone here can help me out....

My 3 gallon aquarium has a male betta in it and the snail (about an inch in size). I hand feed my betta his food (he's so cute), so he doesn't really waste much food. Nothing falls to the bottom, he eats it all.

Questions:
1) I feed my snail once a day a 1/2 inch very thin sliver of some kind of vegetable I have in the fridge that sinks (carrot, brocoli, ect...lettuce would be nice, but it floats). I am feeding it correctly? Too much, too often, wrong food? Or is all OK?

2) He is growing a little hair do of algae, is it ok for this to happen? I have read to bleach him to kill it, but I refuse. Can I just use an old tooth brush on him? Is he ok to be out of the water for a few minutes?

3) He leaves behind two different things in my aquarium, brown strings and whitish strings...I assume the brown is poo and the white is just slime? How do I clean that whitish stringy things, they are all over my artificial plants and my castle that my betta sleeps in. It is very ugly, it looks like a house that has been toilet papers on hallowe'en.


I would love to have feedback on my questions, or a good site to answer them, and I have search and read everything I could, but to no avail.

[WaterPond]

1) veggies are great! I feed mine boiled zuccini. I leave it in for 12hours so it foesnt mess up my water. Try boiling the lettuce it should sink then, but it will become mushy, your snail wont care. You can also get food clips at your LFS to keep stuff down.

2) no bleach! sheesh, who ever told you that! I have heard for cleaning decorations but not on a living thing. A soft bristle toothbrush might work but kep him in water while you do it, just scoop a bowl of it out of your tank. Also, don't scrub very hard. Personally, i would leave the algea, but that is just me.

3)Take out the plants and rinse in warm water

hope this helps. Good luck

[Jchillin]

...or, you could get yourself a bristlenose pleco. Mine loves to clean my snails shell at every opportunity and the snail doesn't mind at all.

Thumbs up on the veggies...though you could limit it to 2x/3x weekly rather than daily.

[jsoong]

Apple snail can be out of water for days (as long as the environment is damp) - they have both lungs & gills, and females routinely leave the water to lay eggs ... so it is fine for you to take the snail out for cleaning .... just be gentle & use something soft ... Definitly NO bleach .... bleach is what we use to kill unwanted snails/eggs off plants.

[hc8719]

3) is there any chance the snail gets some flakes that explains the brown crap, i know my pleco has white crap when i feed him veggies

[coolchinchilla]

Applesnail.net is an excellent information site about snails. You'll find very helpful people there.

www.applesnail.net

HTH