Snails that DO eat live plants

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SEInverts

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
12
Location
South Florida
So, I've been doing some research and found that most all snails do NOT eat live plants...but I'm having trouble finding out the type of snails that DO eat live plants. On another forum, someone mentioned canas as a type of snail that eats live plants. I gather that these are "apple" canas snails? That being said, are there any other kinds of snails that are known to eat healthy plants?

Thanks for the info.
 
I've had Columbian ramshorn snails (Marisa cornuarietis, sometimes also called Giant Ramshorn snails) that did significant damage to healthy plants in my planted tank. I bought them from a local LFS because I had heard that ramshorn snails were "safe" for plants, not realizing at the time that there are two different species of ramshorns and that while the European ramshorn, or "Common Ramshorn," (Planorbis Corneus) is plant-safe, the Columbian is definitely not.

I've also heard that most if not all of the new Sulawesi snails (dozens of different species of the Tylomelania genus) are plant eaters, even voracious plant eaters. Probably the most common of these is the Yellow Rabbit snail. Another common one is the Poso Orange snail. You can see pictures of those plus about another 20 species of tylos here in this gallery. Note that these are Sulawesi species and so need the specialized tank conditions that the Sulawesi shrimp need, i.e. high pH (their native habitat has pH in the 8.3 to 8.6 range) and temperatures up around 80°F and above. So not the kind of things you can pop into a "normal" tropical freshwater tank.

Hope that helps some.
 
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