I have a question about feeding my new snails. I bought 2 to eat the brown algae in my tanks and they went right to work. Both tanks have plants and algae but what do I feed them when the algae is gone? I have bloodworms, brine shrimp[freeze dried], flake food and shrimp pellets. Do I need to feed them veggies? What of my food supply will they do best on? Do I need to buy a special food?
Mystery snail question
- Thread starter Sageofstupidity
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Is it just the two snails in the tank? If not then I wouldn't be to worried about feeding them as they will scavenger for leftovers. I have never really target feed my snails they just live off of "the land".
Once and a while you could give them blanched zucchini like aak suggested. You don't want to over feed your tank as it can cause other issues.
Once and a while you could give them blanched zucchini like aak suggested. You don't want to over feed your tank as it can cause other issues.
Hello; I also do not think that snails exactly eat fish waste. I have been thinking from general observations over time and some more specific ones of late that they may sort of seem to do so. In a tank that I set up for a common pleco last year I did not have snails for a few months. There were always a lot of very long strings of feces to siphon from the tank. I transfered a decent number of ramshorn snails to that tank. After a while I began to notice that there was much less of the long stringy pleco feces, sometimes almost none. There is now a somewhat smaller apparent volume of what I take to be snail feces.
My working hypothesis is that the pleco likes to graze on the hornwort and algae in the tank and veggie wafers. Thinking that like horses, cows and other veggie eaters, the digestion of plants is incomplete and can leave 50% or more of the nutritional(energy) value in the waste. (In some places where they have stripped their environment of trees, people dry cow manure and burn it to cook their food.) I suspect that some fish feces has residual food value and that snails will go for that. Is it actually to be considered "eating waste"? Perhaps it is a distinction without a difference.
My working hypothesis is that the pleco likes to graze on the hornwort and algae in the tank and veggie wafers. Thinking that like horses, cows and other veggie eaters, the digestion of plants is incomplete and can leave 50% or more of the nutritional(energy) value in the waste. (In some places where they have stripped their environment of trees, people dry cow manure and burn it to cook their food.) I suspect that some fish feces has residual food value and that snails will go for that. Is it actually to be considered "eating waste"? Perhaps it is a distinction without a difference.
I wanted to add another part to the question, I put hornwort and anacharis in my tanks, some of the hornwort bristles fell off and are brown. Will my snails eat these brown leaves as they rot or should I just remove them asap? The snails and leaves are in my 10 gal nursery at this time, want to see if they will breed before I separate them. I can't seem to sex them.
Hello; May as well remove the dead hornwort and other detritus. I suspect that it will eventually be eaten by the snails or decomposed, but not sure that it has any value for the tank. It will likely make its way into your filter eventually. The snails should find plenty of other stuff to feed on. I siphon stuff like that out during routine water changes as a matter of course.
Not sure about mystery snails, but some snails are capable of being both male and female at the same time.
Not sure about mystery snails, but some snails are capable of being both male and female at the same time.
If you want to get your mystery snails to breed feed them like you would fish: good quality blood worms. Also, leave a couple inches from the rim of your tank free so they can lay eggs. A more robust site for mystery snail answers would be The Apple Snail (Ampullariidae) Website.
I have bred apple snails successfully.
I have bred apple snails successfully.