golden rabbit snails

[justpeachy127]

We recently purchased three of these snails for our planted aquarium thinking they were cool looking and could get rid of the alge in our tank. But we started noticing that they are chewing off a lot of our grass and plants (which end up floating to the top). Is there anything we can do to prevent this? eg. such as try to feed them some other foods? any help would be much appreciated thanks!

 

[Oohitsae]

They should only be eating the dead parts of plants..

but yes, you can blanche some veggies like zuchinni, cucumber, and lettuce and let them snack on those and/or you can drop in an algea wafer or two on occasion, they should respond nicely to either of those options.
Snails are scavengers, pretty much anything lifeless that you add in there, they'll eat.

 

[justpeachy127]

thanks for your reply! I was beginning to worry after seeing several of my tall plants were chewed off at the stem. i will try some blanched veggies tomorrow....

 

[aqua_chem]

Rabbit snails will eat plants. You might be able to get them to go for veggies, but the plants would probably continue to be a temptation for them.

 

[HN1]

Agreed. Tylomelenia snails (aka "rabbit") snails will eat plants. You can try to reduce the impact by keeping them fed with algae wafers and veggies, but pretty much the only plant that they wont touch are mosses IME.

 

[justpeachy127]

well I've been feeding some algae waffers the last two days... have not been seeing uprooted grass or plants since then. But seeing as they do chomp on plants perhaps I should consider rehoming one or two to my betta tanks (as I have three snails)...

 

[justpeachy127]

here they are in my 30 gal tank