whats the biggest snail a Dpuffer can eat?

[RENEGADE]

i bought some snails to feed my dwarf puffer(going to get soon) but i think there to big. the biggest snail i have is 1/4" will a DP eat it????

[Pufferpunk]

The rule of thumb is snails as large as their eye.

[cdawson]

mine usually eat snails a LOT bigger than that. usually about 2cm long. I feed mine malaysian trumpet snails.

[OrionGirl]

Puffers will gang up on larger snails. I've seen my pack of 4 go after a cone snails that was about 1 inch in length. They broke the tip of it's shell off, and kept dragging it around until they were able to get to the body and then tore it to shreds. I had previously though that they were limited to smaller snails, but it seems that a group effort puts just about anything in the meal plan. I have a ramshorn my pack is currently working on--the snail gets about an hour a day of peace, and then they harrass it into closing up.

[Pufferpunk]

There is no way a dwarf can break the shell of a MTS. They can only slurp out the meat & can very likely break their teeth on the shell.

[cdawson]

oh, well if it's just dwarfs I guess then. I meant my GSP and f-8

[PufferNewbie]

speaking of snails. im breeding some pond snails
how long does it take for them to go from eggs to a . normal size snail.. cuz i've been staring at the 6 egg patchs for like almost 2 weeks and i see no new snails..

[OrionGirl]

From everything I've read, it can take 3-6 weeks for the eggs to hatch, depending on the water temp. With most eggs, a warmer temp will decrease the length of time needed to hatch. This pretty much is the case for my tanks--one of the reasons why deciding to start breeding snails after purchasing a puffer is so frustrating! Once hatched, baby snails grow very quickly if there's an abundance of food.

[PufferNewbie]

hey when you say hatch, is it those little flea like thing that jumps around int he water?

[OrionGirl]

No, those are springtails or water fleas. Newly hatched snails are very tiny blobs, with no visible shell. Usually, I don't notice them until they are about a week old--then they are about as big as a font 10 lower case o.

[RENEGADE]

thanks guy i knew you could help me!:) :) :)

[PufferNewbie]

holy crap are those good or bad ? i have like a million of them swimming everyhwere.. should i try to change the water a bit?

[OrionGirl]

They are usually present in small numbers in healthy tanks. If they are readily noticable in your tank, it probably indicates high nutrients in the water. Usually fish will keep the numbers down, but this can be a problem in fry tanks, where the fry are not large enough to eat them, or in tanks with very large fish--the buggers are too small to be noticed by say an oscar. I'd guess that your tank has a bit too many nutrients--cut back on feeding, and if it's a puffer tank, make sure leftovers get cleaned up (in many cases, this means you have to manually remove leftovers).