What do you keep with your Rabbit Snail?

[Louise02]

What do you keep with your Rabbit Snail?  I have heard that they go well with shrimp, but it seems like neos need cooler water than Rabbit Snails.  Any suggestions on what a Rabbit Snail can live with when it likes such warm temperatures and hard water?  Thank you!

[beastie]

Finally a topic for all of my experience 🙂

First of, the rabbit snails do not need as warm water as advertised. Yes they can handle higher temps, but a local breeder and me too for several months/years have kept them at various temperatures from 24-28°C and no issue. They may be less active, sleep more but not way more than usual, not noticeably.

Another person keeping them here had them with sulawesi shrimp, as they have the same parameters, and found that overpopulation of shrimp is hurtful to the rabbit snails, as they will simply step on the snails, bother them, they stop going out and moving and eventually starve, as they are too bothered by the shrimp. That is why I never tried them with shrimp. I have however tried them with various fish, in various sized tanks, so here is my epxerience:

I got five of middle sized rabbits in 10/21 (around 4cm I would say) and I still have one of those, around 6cm. They grow really slow. I have kept them in a 360liter tank with corydoras, various tetras, and they would roam the whole tank, climb the glass up to the cover (60 cm) and then let go and fall down to the bottom. They do this climb/fall excersise no matter the tank size/height and they always fall and sometimes they crack their shells. They like to burrow in the sand, but wont do it if the substrate is not soft enough. They can spend days burrowed, but never fully, just partially. They also sleep with their snouts hanging out, looking dead, lying on their back, for days at a time when not disturbed. They had no problem being bulldozed by a heard of corydoras and took a food pellet from them. Mine ate some of my plants, so I always kept handfuls of leaves in the tank for them to eat, even so, they would bite of my stemmed plants, cause they were closer.

I then got bolivian rams, saw them decimate few ramshorn snails and decided to move my rabbits to a different tank. At that point I only had 4 adults, but had 3 babies, and it was 02/23. Due to lack of other options, I remade a 54 liter for them, put a higher sand level, no planted plants to maximize the floor space, added some wood for snacking, lots of leaf litter and anubias that was hovering above the bottom to provide shaded areas. Since then I started hunting other inhabitants to add to my rabbits. I tried honey gourami, and was not satisfied about how they would intensely watch the smaller snails and their antenaes. Ember tetras were a good match, static, nice colors, didnt bother the snails at all. Rasboras, hengel and espei, were too active and too curious about the antenaes. Endler fish worked, but also a bit too curious about the snails, but the mouth is too small.  I used this tank as a breeding setup for whitecloud minnows, so ofcourse their fry didnt poses any problem, and rabbits did a nice cleanup of the leftovers. Since 07/23 I brought a group of 10 pseudomugil luminatus. While they will eat whatever is on the ground, so any attempt at spirulina tablets for snails was met with ultimate failure, they are a super small mouthed fish and while they will look at the snails, they never bothered them.

Recently I decided to terminate my rabbit snail project, as I planned to add some bottom dwelling fish and maybe some plants to the 54 liter tank, and I decided to take them out. I had 30 babies and 1 adult left, largest baby was around 4 cm, smallest are 4mm. You always will lose an occasional baby snail, due to feeding I believe, at around 0,5cm size, they do better when not disturbed. The real kicker is, the tank is 25°C, pH is 7, maybe lower, and the water is soft. Only the adults, that spend 4 years in this water, have a shell corrosion, all the babies shells are ok. I had a piece of cuttlebone in the tank with them at all times.

This concludes my rabbit story, if you want, I can also add what I used to feed 🙂 

[Louise02]

@beastie I am printing this out to read and to keep.  Yes. I am interested in anything you can tell me about the Rabbit Snail!

[TOtrees]

I'd back up all of @beastie's info. I think they're great and cool, I got 1 that turned into many (she was preggers at purchase), and I turned my mind to a bit of extra cash or trade-in since they're so pricey. But the super slow growth rate, along with difficulty making a good match with tank mates, led me to unload them all for better options. I prefer to have my tanks set up to do multiple jobs, and have fast return or ROI. I can handle a few tanks with 1 job, or a tank with slow/low ROI, but a tank that is both of those is not for me. One setup where I had them included amano shrimps, dwarf neon rainbows and pentazona barbs. Even with all that activity, they were quite active and out and about. But I agree that the biggest threat is just curious or nippy fish. If the rabbit's antennae are always getting nudged or nipped, they're going to stay in their shell all the time. Maybe if a curious/nippy fish was purely diurnal or purely nocturnal, they might find a way to co-exist, but if the fish is diurnal, your rabbit will be out at night and if you keep them to watch and enjoy, well...

[Louise02]

So, I have a 12-year-old daughter.  We keep tanks for her (for many reasons).  Is it possible that having one tank that is focused around this snail would be interesting enough for a tween?  Neither of us like conflict (we won't buying any more gourami).  She is interested in peaceful eco-systems.  It's fine with me that it is a slow grower.  I think it is really, really important for kids to understand that some things take time.  Like getting anubias nano petite to grow.  Anyway, any thoughts are very welcome.

BTW, could she keep her Mystery Snail or a pair of Mystery Snails with the Rabbit Snail?  I know that that would be a lot of snail for a 10-gallon.

[Lennie]

Hello Louise,

I have so many of these guys, and so many different species of them! How? These  guys tend to give birth under stress of transportation if Im not mistaken, and when they arrive to the LFS their tank had many tiny babies around. I asked my LFS to get all these babies, because who will actually take care of such slow growing snail at a store for so long.

They were willing to give me, so I had a chance to observe many different colors of them.,

They want that hot temps. I find 26-28C is a sweet spot. Those ranges brought me the cute little babies.

They are clumsy and not great to keep with most tank mates imo. They can get bullied easily and are super slow to outrun anything or any place they feel discomfort.

 

They love fine sand and burying into it. But it is a good idea to provide them objects around to correct themself when needed, again, not the best movers. 

They climb to glasses and drop themself to the ground randomly. Like mystery snails parasnailing, these have heavy shells and cant parasnail but basically drop themself down. Any tough objects around may damage their shell when they do this.

 

They need a similar diet with mystery snails but they are very slow eaters. They LOVE leaf litter, I always provide mine dry leaves. 

On 7/23/2024 at 8:59 PM, Louise02 said:

Mystery Snail or a pair of Mystery Snails with the Rabbit Snail?  I know that that would be a lot of snail for a 10-gallon.

I would not advice that. I tried that before and it didn't work. Why? Different water temp likings, mystery snails are so fast at moving and eating so they outcompete rabbit snails very much, and male mystery snails want to snex with every big snail bothering rabbit snails like crazy. So I had to move my mystery snails to another tank.

 

Rabbit snails are awesome, AWESOME, but they kinda need that species only tank or very very peaceful tank to live happily. And no, not even guppies were OK to keep them together with. I bet small cories, some shrimp (not a big population because shrimp also constantly pick around and bully &scare snails if they are high in population).

Here are some pics from my tank:

Edited July 23 by Lennie

[Louise02]

@Lennie  Thank you.  The pictures are fantastic!  When you say leaf litter, what type of leaves are you referring to?  Thank you, again!

[Louise02]

This may be a dumb question, but I am going to ask anyway.  Would you try a pair of ADF with a Rabbit Snail?

[Lennie]

On 7/23/2024 at 9:22 PM, Louise02 said:

@Lennie  Thank you.  The pictures are fantastic!  When you say leaf litter, what type of leaves are you referring to?  Thank you, again!

I personally use beech, banana, catappa and oak tree leaves. I collect banana leaves from my own garden, used to buy catappa leaves and collect beech and oak tree leaves when I go hiking in the forest

On 7/23/2024 at 9:28 PM, Louise02 said:

This may be a dumb question, but I am going to ask anyway.  Would you try a pair of ADF with a Rabbit Snail?

African dwarf frogs are not legally allowed to import in my country if Im not mistaken. We don't have them so I have no experience. 

 

@Guppysnail kept and bred them. But I dont know if she paired them with any snail, but I know she also doesn't have rabbit snails. Maybe she may share some opinion, but If I gotta be fair, rabbits are too slow and clumsy to compare with any other snail really

[beastie]

African frogs will stick anything into their mouths, so I would say no good option.

I would suggest a similar setup to mine in the 10g to utilize the most of floor space for snails and add a small small mouthed fish like a microrasbora to be something to look at but the rabbits are fun fun 🙂 love them to death their cute snouts, the eating 

[Louise02]

@Lennie I need to move the rabbit snail as soon as possible.  It was getting along with the other snails in a 10-gallon just fine, but that tank has crushed coral.  I need to set up a new tank.  I have everything except sand.  Can I use sand from the hardware store?  I can order aquarium sand online, but I am trying to set this up quickly. 

I do have plant and shrimp substrate, if that would work.  It is like Fluval Stratum.  Are you familiar with that product?  If that would work, then I am set.  It just looked like everyone uses sand with the rabbit snail.

I would appreciate any advice.  Thank you!

[beastie]

I use pool filtration sand or playground sand from any store. Just make sure to wash it. Tbh for a while my snails survived in a large ikea box when i was remaking the tanks for some time too.

[Louise02]

Would Aqueon Shrimp substrate work?  or is it really better to get sand?

I have crushed coral and bags from Aquarium co-op to put under it, but seeing as that crushed coral tore off the bottom of its shell....I have to put something over the coral.

[Louise02]

On 7/23/2024 at 12:50 AM, beastie said:

Finally a topic for all of my experience 🙂

First of, the rabbit snails do not need as warm water as advertised. Yes they can handle higher temps, but a local breeder and me too for several months/years have kept them at various temperatures from 24-28°C and no issue. They may be less active, sleep more but not way more than usual, not noticeably.

Another person keeping them here had them with sulawesi shrimp, as they have the same parameters, and found that overpopulation of shrimp is hurtful to the rabbit snails, as they will simply step on the snails, bother them, they stop going out and moving and eventually starve, as they are too bothered by the shrimp. That is why I never tried them with shrimp. I have however tried them with various fish, in various sized tanks, so here is my epxerience:

I got five of middle sized rabbits in 10/21 (around 4cm I would say) and I still have one of those, around 6cm. They grow really slow. I have kept them in a 360liter tank with corydoras, various tetras, and they would roam the whole tank, climb the glass up to the cover (60 cm) and then let go and fall down to the bottom. They do this climb/fall excersise no matter the tank size/height and they always fall and sometimes they crack their shells. They like to burrow in the sand, but wont do it if the substrate is not soft enough. They can spend days burrowed, but never fully, just partially. They also sleep with their snouts hanging out, looking dead, lying on their back, for days at a time when not disturbed. They had no problem being bulldozed by a heard of corydoras and took a food pellet from them. Mine ate some of my plants, so I always kept handfuls of leaves in the tank for them to eat, even so, they would bite of my stemmed plants, cause they were closer.

I then got bolivian rams, saw them decimate few ramshorn snails and decided to move my rabbits to a different tank. At that point I only had 4 adults, but had 3 babies, and it was 02/23. Due to lack of other options, I remade a 54 liter for them, put a higher sand level, no planted plants to maximize the floor space, added some wood for snacking, lots of leaf litter and anubias that was hovering above the bottom to provide shaded areas. Since then I started hunting other inhabitants to add to my rabbits. I tried honey gourami, and was not satisfied about how they would intensely watch the smaller snails and their antenaes. Ember tetras were a good match, static, nice colors, didnt bother the snails at all. Rasboras, hengel and espei, were too active and too curious about the antenaes. Endler fish worked, but also a bit too curious about the snails, but the mouth is too small.  I used this tank as a breeding setup for whitecloud minnows, so ofcourse their fry didnt poses any problem, and rabbits did a nice cleanup of the leftovers. Since 07/23 I brought a group of 10 pseudomugil luminatus. While they will eat whatever is on the ground, so any attempt at spirulina tablets for snails was met with ultimate failure, they are a super small mouthed fish and while they will look at the snails, they never bothered them.

Recently I decided to terminate my rabbit snail project, as I planned to add some bottom dwelling fish and maybe some plants to the 54 liter tank, and I decided to take them out. I had 30 babies and 1 adult left, largest baby was around 4 cm, smallest are 4mm. You always will lose an occasional baby snail, due to feeding I believe, at around 0,5cm size, they do better when not disturbed. The real kicker is, the tank is 25°C, pH is 7, maybe lower, and the water is soft. Only the adults, that spend 4 years in this water, have a shell corrosion, all the babies shells are ok. I had a piece of cuttlebone in the tank with them at all times.

This concludes my rabbit story, if you want, I can also add what I used to feed 🙂 

I would love to hear what you used to feed, or anything else for that matter!  Thank you!

[beastie]

Regarding feeding they are not picky, so easy to please. Cucumbers, zucchini, carrot, bell pepper, pumpkin, sweet potato, cauliflower, broccoli, pea, sweet pea, green beans.

Any of the green stalks of vegetables like cauliflower broccoli, beets or even the harder part of lettuce or cabbage even, those worked too. Basically what would you chop away from those and not eat could be fed.

All the leaves be it beech, oak, jackfruit, mangrove you name it, they ate it. Green leaves too sometime, nettles, spinach,...

All the algae wafers, protein wafers, anything that hits the ground really 🙂

for vegetables i would do thin long slice, pour boiling water over them and drop to the tank weighted with something. I am confident in my water parameters so they could stay for 24-48 hours, but not more as the vegetable rots and fouls the water 

[Ninjoma]

I keep mine with swordtails, bristelnose plecos and dwarf petricola catfish in the upper 70s.

[HerdyGerdy]

Rabbit snails are so fun! I have a few in a 16 gallon long with neocaridina shrimp and celestial pearl danios. I haven't had any issues with that combo and regularly find baby rabbit snails. 

 

I also have bladder and ramshorn snails in the tank and I have found that, when they get to abundant, they can outcompeted the rabbit snails (especially the babies). I regularly remove some of the bladder and ramshorn snails to stop that from happening. I feed them green beans regularly and different wafers/shrimp pellets. They don't seem very picky. Have fun with them!