Do guppies eat snail eggs?

[Chikadee]

I have been trying unsuccessfully to breed nuisance snails for my dwarf puffers for the past two months. I keep on seeing the little blobs of eggs all over the tank, but I never see the results. I used to have ghost shrimp in the tank, but then I found out they eat the eggs, so I took them out. Now I have 4 guppies and a bunch of baby guppies in there. Are they the culprits? The only other thing I can think of is that it's a bare-bottom tank, so maybe I am sucking up all the baby snails as I do my water changes? Anyone have any suggestions/ideas? I thought snails were supposed to breed faster than rabbits, but I am quickly running low...

[acronym:801a9e5d76="Thanks in Advance"]TIA[/acronym:801a9e5d76]!

[Christmasfish]

I think they only breed that way if you want them. Everything I have decided to eat snails. Only my huge 1.5-2 inch apple snails are safe.

Baby snails sometime hide in afilter like a [acronym:bdbfc061c2="Under Gravel Filter"]UGF[/acronym:bdbfc061c2]. Maybe throw some eggs in a [acronym:bdbfc061c2="Hang On Back"]HOB[/acronym:bdbfc061c2]?
I can't keep snails myself...

[patryuji]

I have never seen guppies eat snails or their eggs in my tanks (pond snails). It is quite easy to suck up baby snails when gravel vacuuming though (they sometimes look like little bits of fish excrement). Do you have any plants? That may be key to having a snail population maintained. Since I moved all live plants out of my 10Gallon the few snails left in that tank would no longer reproduce...haven't even seen an egg clutch on the glass anywhere for the last few months.

[Chikadee]

I have a big plastic plant in there and a piece of plastic drift wood, but no live plants. I suppose I can get some but it is really low light and I don't have a substrate for it... Will that be a problem?

[oscarbreeder]

You can get some nice low light plants to put in there but you will need some sort of substrate.
[acronym:2217761715="Hope this helps (or) Happy to help"]HTH[/acronym:2217761715]

[patryuji]

Java fern and less frequent gravel vacuuming would be my suggestion.

Hornwort works very well for proliferation of snails (from what I have seen in my tanks) but unless it is very thinly spread it seems to suffer when there is less than 1.5wpg.

[freshwatergirl]

How should I start out my plant/fish tank?

[freshwatergirl]

I can't seem to get rid of my snails. It may be the type of snail you have. You may need to look up some info on them to see what is needed for your type of snail to reproduce, if you already haven't. I have a sturdy fake plant, large shell and a fake skull for the fish to swim in and out of. I also have small gravel in the bottom of my tank. I don't think that gravel should matter, but you never know. Hope this helps. Lots of luck.

[millipede]

hey chickadee... there was a few times, back when I had a five gallon, that I would empty the tank out and wash it with soap and rinse it a bunch of times before I set it up again... then I'd have those snails come back... somehow they would survive my rigorous cleaning... something like hornwort might help.. plants like that do better when they are floating, at least for me because I also don't have much light.. instead of trying to root them I usually just drop them in and let them be where they want to be... when they float at the surface they grow a lot better for me... another option is plant bulbs from walmart or somewhere. They aren't great, might not even do great for you, but they are cheap... it's less than three dollars for 4-6 plants, if they all grow... that might help a little anyway. and I've never done anything special for substrate for any of those things... of course I don't clean my gravel as often as I should... I'd start with some hornwort... there's a good chance you would pick up a few new snails with the purchase too... oh yeah, another option would be to setup something small, doesn't really even need to be a tank, with some filtration or aeration and leave it alone, with a plant... this is just my opinion, something I myself would do and don't think I'd fail, get something like a large vase or something that's around 1-5 gallons, add an airstone and a plant, place near a window and let it be for a while... with snails of course, you'd have eggs in no time... lots of them... well, experiment anyway, I'm sure you'll find something that works for you...