snail breeding tank

[Roop]

i have a small 1 gallon tank that i dumped a bunch of snails in. i was closing my pond for the year (using clorine to kill anything in it (there are no fish)) and i desided to keep some snails. i have lots of clown loaches in my 60g tank who like snails. i figure i'll get snails for them.

i filled it half way with pond water and put some rocks, driftwood and an aquatic plant in there.

anything you guys recommend? these are run of the mill garden variety water snails. dark brown with pointy shells.

 

[Roop]

here's a pic:

 

[valdok]

make sure they have something to munch on. Algae, or something...

 

[Roop]

i figured they would eat the decaying parts of that plant. i'm not sure what it is but it took over half of my main tank. every few weeks i just through away 50-80% of it. i'll just give it to the snials.

 

[catfishmike]

raising snails is a good idea,i kinda raise my own snails for the same reason,loaches.i would use a filtered tank,though.snails are know to carry parasites and disease.a well filtered 3-5 gallon tank should work fine to raise snails.i had a nice batch of malaysian trupet snails going and then i had to dump a rouge cichlid in to seprate him from other fish.darn thing ate all my snails!oh well

 

[theeyrietrainer]

i have a snail thing too, although my guppies dont eat snails, i find them cute. they multiply quickly, why heck, my snails are the native kind (same as yours) and they clean the algae off the leave of the plant i put in there with them! not even ONCE do they chew through the leaves! they are tiny and i always see tiny specs, babies, moving but never eggs...they dont get too large which makes them the desired size for any snail eaters

 

[Roop]

i was messing with that small tank a couple days ago. as soon as i opened the lid i had to get about 5' back. i reeked. it's like human feces x100!!! i dumped everything into a big net. i washed it throuly in the backyard with cold water. i put the remaining snails into my 30gal tank that i'm just starting up. they are thriving in there. there are lots of egg sacs all over the tank already.

the tank is still cycling but they will probably help to get the bacteria up. that tank has a fluval 2+ rated for 27gal. it may be ok, but i'll probably get a fluval 4+ for it, just so the snails don't stink it up again.

 

[Lotus]

I'm guessing catfishmike was right (as usual) about a filtered tank, Roop

Something was obviously decaying in your tank. Maybe because there is a lot less light in the tank that there was in the pond. We're trying to have them in a 1g bowl we had lying around with an airpump/stone we also had lying around. So far it hasn't gotten smelly, but I should probably do a water change on it now and then.

 

[Gomer]

it won't hurt to put some fish food in there from time to time. ..and do water changes on it like you would with a reglar fish tank.

 

[Roop]

yeah gomer and lotus, they are in a normal tank now which gets 10-25% in a week. there are a bunch of baby swords in there who seem to like 30gal more than their 1/4gal baby tank.

 

[Roop]

oh and the pond is totally nuked. it's crystal clear, 10°C or lower every day and NOTHING is alive in it. it's totally sterile at this point. next year i'll do more work on it.

the biggest problem i had with it this year were the dirty larvae that lived in it.

what i may do with my pond next year is dig it deeper and bigger and add gold fish. i'm certain the fish will eat the direy larvae in there... ugh that was approaching the grossness of that smell.

 

[Roop]

update: the baby snails have hatched in my 30 gal. there are about a dozen large adults (15mm) and hundreds of babies. each baby is about 0.3mm. most of the egg sacks have broken. i can see that some of the babies are leaving their sacs. some babies didn't make it out and may have died. i'll monitor it but i think my loaches will be very happy.

 

[Toyman321]

anyone want to mail me some snails??? I have puffers that I want to raise snails for and have somehow been unable to get any snails, I've put plants in a smaller tank for a day or two before I put them in the puffer tank hoping to get some snails or eggs in the smaller tank with no luck...

 

[Lotus]

We got the local store to give us some from their tanks when we bought something once. I have a ton, and could send you some if you can't find anyone to give you some.