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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.
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.
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
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.