Snails

[QTOFFER]

I'm thinking of getting a snail for my non-planted tank.
I'd like something that would browse on algae (green and brown), that would not reproductively take over the tank, and is big enough to be appreciated as a member of my FW community in its own right.

So far, I've narrowed my search to mystery snails and apple snails.

1 Are these the same type of snail? - there seems to be some confusion about this on the web.

2 Can I get only one? Do they need friends?

3 Will any of my fish attack or eat it? Will Angels and flagfish coexist peacefully with it?

4 Will they do well at my tank temp (80F)?

 

[Allivymar]

Have you checked out http://www.applesnail.net/ yet? Its THE snail site on the net for those guys.

The angelfish will ignore em (unless you smoosh em so the angels can eat em *grin* we did that with the nuisance snails we had. Once the angels figured it out, they kept trying to eat the snails themselves. Thing is, they don't have the mouth parts and would swallow em whole. And poop em out whole the next day LOL). Since the flagfish are vegetarians, my guess is they'll leave the snails alone as well. The only fish I'd worry about is loaches and puffers.

Oh! And I pulled that duplicate post for ya

 

[QTOFFER]

Thanks, Allivymar! I found answers to most of my ??? on that site.

What about water calcium? My water is extremely soft (3 deg KH, 3 deg DH) with a pH of 7.0. I hope that would not be a problem.

I'm assuming that the snails your angels swallowed were babies - still, passing them could not have been very comfortable for the angels 8O!

 

[Allivymar]

The calcium may be a prob; I'm sure theres a way to add it, but I'm not sure how. Maybe some of our snaily folk can answer that one (I'm NOT snaily folk LOL I loathe em).

Heh, since mine were nuisance (aka pond) snails, they weren't very large to begin with. We smooshed em cause I hate having snails in my tank; was why I wound up adding loaches to my tank. But prior, hubby (not me....yuck LOL) would smoosh the snails with a plastic card, and the angels would go wild! So they would desperately try to eat the snails by themselves, knock em off the walls and swallow em. They never seemed to be bothered by the snails coming out the other end, although I'm sure the snails didn't feel the same

 

[Fruitbat]

LOL Allivymar....there were actually 6 posts for this topic....I got four of them earlier....I must have missed one! Good advice on the snails!