Keep the pond snails? Get rams horns?

[Piggypie]

I recently bought some plants from the LFS and I found two tiny pond snails on one of them before I dipped my plants in a hydrogen peroxide mix. I thought they were pretty cute, but I wasn't sure if they were going to cause huge issues in my tank, so I poured some tank water into a little one gallon bowl and put them in there. Now, a few days later, they seem ok, and there aren't any baby snails, and they seem pretty unhappy (sometimes I see them hanging out just above the water line) but I'm still not sure whether or not I want them in my tank.

I have a heavily planted tank with some slight algae problems at the moment, and I've heard both that these snails will destroy my plants, and that they won't touch live plants and will only go after the algae and dead parts.

When I started my tank I had about 5-7 MTS, and now I'm not sure how many I have because they all hide in the sand, but it seems like there're around 20-30 in there based on the 10 or so that I see when I clean and move around the substrate. I really love these guys, and they have never given me any issues. I think they're really cute, and always love it when I spot one or two that aren't hiding.

I'm also considering getting 1 or 2 red ramshorn snails because every time I go to the LFS I see them and think they look awesome, and I've heard that they won't kill my plants and that like to eat algae.

I've heard both that you can control pond/ramshorn snail populations by not overfeeding, and that if they can't find enough food that they'll just eat your plants instead, so which is it?

I also like how small these snails all stay (even when the MTS are an inch long, they are still smaller than an inch long apple snail). Also, I don't really want to get an apple snail, nerites, or an assassin snail because I don't want a large snail in the tank I have right now, I don't think I have enough algae to support several nerites and I don't want hard little white egg dots everywhere, and I don't want my MTS to die out.
I guess what I'm asking is has anyone had any positive or negative experiences with either of these?

 

[jlk]

Hi! No personal experience with ramshorns, but I have pond, nerites, mts, apple and Japanese trapdoor snails. All interesting creatures with their own attributes. None of these guys eat 'live' plants though some will eat dying and/or dead plant matter (three of my larger tanks are heavily planted as is my pond). Nerites do not grow large and are by far the best algae eaters of any of these snails. I rarely ever see a pond snail except for cleaning filter media. They will reproduce like crazy if a tank is being heavily fed (such as a fry tank) but the population will stabilize once there is not excess food. Very tough little critters, too.

I know most people hate pond snails but I have had them forever and have never had a major issue with them, including in planted tanks. And while they are tolerant of a wide variety of conditions, they are a good little indicator of water quality-when conditions are less than ideal (temp, ph, oxygen, toxins, swings in parameters, TDS, etc), you will see them venture out of the water and hang along the water line. Still keep your test kit handy though!

 

[Piggypie]

Thanks so much for the input! that's good to know. I set up a small tank so I could try and see if the ponds or ramshorns to get a feel for their growth rates, and I might drop any brown ramshorns in there every few days/weeks once I move the pink ones into my main tank to try to keep them from cross breeding too much and getting rid of all the pinks