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The mighty pest snail


Will Billy
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I will admit ive watched a lot of youtube videos, and read a lot of online materials, and when it comes to the topic of top 10 cleaning crew, i feel like the mighty little pest snail often gets overlooked. I have 2 rather large mystery snails in my tank, but i have aquired some bladder snails from my LFS through hitch hiking in on some live plant purchases. Pound for pound it has been my observation that these rapidly reproducing snails put in more work and have less bio load than my large mystery snails. Their small size allows them to get into nooks and crannies my fat large mystery snails cant get to. Much like my schooling otocinclus cats, they tag team my tank at impressive speeds when working together. The biggest downside to these “ pest snails “, is what i find the most invaluable aspect to them. They reproduce quickly and a colony can get out of control if your tank conditions are just right for it. These snails populations can easily be controlled by food, or more specifically a lack there of. When food sources for these snails gets scarce, they begin to starve and stop breeding, and when there is an abundance of food the population explodes. It is this trait that i find the most invaluable. I use it sorta like a check engine light on my tank. Not only is a population explosion an early indicator of an algae problem i havent noticed yet, but the snails have already mobilized and are meeting the problem head on before i have had a chance to react. And finally the best thing by far is my community of bladder snails were 100% free of charge. You cant beat that value. For all the benefits of these tiny little work horses and they were a free bonus from purchasing my plants. They have earned there keep 1,000 times over vs my large mystery snails. It might just be my jaded opinion on the matter, but hands down i think they are the best cleaning crew critter you could ever have. 10/10 i highly recommend. 

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I have a whole herd of trumpet snails in my 55. No idea how many. But I do have a couple of YoYo loaches that help keep the population down. Before I got the loaches I would see small ones all over, but not so much anymore. I still see the bigger ones at night. I know I still have a healthy population of them because if I scoop a handful of gravel and look, I'll generally find two or three little ones. So I'm happy with the balance. And it keeps the loaches entertained! Never had any luck with mystery snails, not sure why, so I gave up on those. But IMO, a tank without snails would just be strange.

Edited by morphy1701
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I've always considered mystery snails to be more of an ornamental snail than a worker snail.  I believe I've read that their radula are much weaker than say a nerite snail which is why they have a tougher time scraping algae off glass and decor. 

They are beautiful, but they don't seem to be all that good at keeping algae at bay, etc. More of a pet than a pest.

 

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