Snail Breeding - I know you will think I'm crazy

[ccurtis]

Hello Nermz,

So I have two tanks, a 29 gallon, and a 125 gallon. I have ran them snail free (other than nerite) for long time. Both tanks are moderate to heavily planted. With all the plants, I have to battle algae here and there. It's never been out of control as I feel I do a pretty good job keeping things balanced. Recently, I decided I wanted "pest" snails. I am calling them "pests" just because people will know I am referring to bladder, ramshorn, and MTS. I want them to back up the other algae eating animals and help out with some of the leftover fish food and dead plant matter in the tank. I do not find them to be pest but rather a great janitorial staff when I have had them in past.

With that being said, I have thrown some of each in both of my tanks and have been patiently waiting to for the population explosion. I finally have started seeing them reproduce in my 29 gallon. That tank has cherry barbs, cardinal tetras, panda corys, and neocaridina. 

In my 125, I have a large community of fish. Bolivian Rams, multiple types of small tetras, platys, a few swords and mollies, bristlenose pleco, a few otos, a few roseline sharks, zebra danios, golden wonder killi's, harlequin rasboras, a few different varieties of corys, an angel fish, 2 blue acaras, and 3 african dwarf frogs. It's heavily stocked and heavily planted. It's colorful and there is a lot going on, but there is no aggression and water parameters are good as I stay up on the maintenance. The fish are thriving and breeding.  However, the population explosion with the snails has not happened. In fact, I am fairly confident something in there is eating the snails as I have put in quite a few bladder and ramshorns and I have not seen them since. I didn't think any those types of fish ate snails. Any thoughts on why they are disappearing in this tank? Do you know if any of those fish would eat the snails? I knows it's a larger tank so it may take more time for me to see more of them, but I was only able to find one snail tonight out of about 100 that I have put in. The tanks have lids, so I doubt they are coming out. Perhaps because there are so many fish in the tank there isn't enough left over food to support a large colony of snails? 

Thanks. 

[gardenman]

Snail populations boom and bust with food. More food means more snails. If the fish get hungry enough they'll eat snails also. My swordtails wiped out a booming snail population when I had to go into the hospital for fifteen days. With nothing else to eat, they ate the snails. If you keep the tank well fed, even slightly overfed, you'll have lots of snails. 

[ccurtis]

That’s the thing.  I feed pretty heavily. That’s why I’m a little perplexed. I’ll add a little more food to my feedings and see what happens. 

[sudofish]

Snails love carrots in my experience. I blanch them and let them cool then put one in each tank. My electric blue acara bumps it and rolls it around a bit when I first put it in but then he leaves it alone and the snails can eat in peace. I also like shrimp king snail stixx and calcium chips for snails. Those are things you can do to target feed snails without the fish eating up everything.

[Guppysnail]

Many of your stock in the 125 eat baby and small bladder snails grow them out a bit then add a handful so they breed faster than they are consumed. I raise bladders intentionally as well 😁

[Nik_n]

I currently have a problem with pest snails (pond snails) and I have been struggling to control the population. I know it due to overfeeding and I cut back on feeding a lot which seemed it helped but I never quit got rid of them. My tank is heavily planted (mostly with amazon swords) which have broad leaves, which block the sunlight of smaller plants and leaves. Usually these leaves begin to rot and are infested with snails.

The problem that I have with them is that they produce so much waste. When I gravel vac most if not all is pure snail waste which I find really upsetting. Plans do absorb some of that but the snails produce much more and much faster.

I wanted to share this in order to warn about purposely breeding snails in the main tank.

I'm not really a fan of snails, but I don't mind an odd one here and there but they soon make a lot more. What I'm trying to say is that big snail populations can be a real pain to deal with once they are established        

[Taco Playz]

Yay! Another golden wonder fan! If you get overpopulated I would definetly feed them to the Killies mine love snails. Happy fishkeeping!!!