For those of you with snails

[mrzap]

Do they tend to eat all the leaves on your plants or do they tend to eat mostly the dead leaves and keep the tank clean?

 

[Purrbox]

This entirely depends on the type of snail that you have. In my tanks I have MTS and Pomacea Bridgesii. Neither of these have touched my healthy plants and only the Brig has done any clean up on the dying leaves. Both love munching on algae, though not enough to save me from having to scrub the algae of the glass.

 

[mrzap]

Cool, my only experience with snails had been land snails and they seem to prefer to eat dead leaves before the healthy ones

 

[czcz]

Same experience as Purrbox with limpets, pond, the smaller sp. of ramshorns, and MTS. Nerite snails are awesome algae eaters but need a covered tank because they like to go out for a stroll.

 

[crazycat]

giant columbian ramshorns will eat plants as will pomacea maculata (these can be hard to distinguish from pomacea brigesii)

check this out for info on applesnails
http://www.applesnail.net/

but don't be scared snails are awsome--i have tons in a very heavily planted tank--you just have to know what you're getting...

hth

 

[Thaiboxer]

Um, silly question and I don't mean to hijack... but do Clown Loaches eat Malaysian Trumpet Snails?

I like them both!

Thanks!
Mike

 

[Sati]

I read that the shells of MTS's are so hard that they have been known to break a puffers beak. If that's true, it makes me worry for my loaches...

 

[Talon242]

I have mts and applesnails neither touch the plants... I take that back sometimes they touch them, and thats all they do

 

[crazycat]

i gotta say, i've heard that mts shells are that tough--but ime, my clownies totally eat them! i have empty shells EVERYWHERE! sigh.

 

[mrzap]

Looks like I won't have a choice soon. I just saw what appeared to be a very very very small baby snail crawling up the side of my glass. I guess some eggs snuck in on one of my plants

 

[crazycat]

if you don't want them, get some loaches! yoyos stay small and eat little snails

 

[Lance M.]

MTS are good for aerating the substrate and eating food that falls into the substrate. They are very helpful and I find them good for planted tanks.

I like trapdoor snails. They are livebearers and they don't reprouduce rapidly at all so there will always be a small number of them. Good to watch just going around the tank eating stuff. They stay small (under 2 inchs) and have black and orange/yellow spirals.

 

[Drocnoc]

Loaches and puffers eat snails differently.

Puffers break the shell while loaches pull them from the shell.