Snails

[DeputyChiefJR]

I've been thinking of getting a couple snails for clean-up but don't want to end up with 400,000 of them running around the tanks...I'm sure there have been other threads like this but after 10 minutes of searching i can't find them, so which snails am I looking for?

[GreenGrass]

I have 3 Golden Mystery Snails. They have been in my tank about 3 months now and I have never seen any eggs, nor, of course, any new snails. Perhaps these bigger snails areen't as prolific.....or maybe they are bidding their time. Anyway, if you pick a bigger snail like this, then at least they will be easy to remove once they get bigger.

I would like to say there is 1 type of snail that everyone seems to love in great numbers, the (here comes a spelling excercise) Malaysian Trumpet Snail. These are the Ice cream cone guys, and they root about in the gravel doing their snail-things. some feel they aerate the gravel. I have found they tend to colonize the aquaclear and the penguin biowheel.

There is a long, bitter debate about which filter is better: Aquaclear or Penguin. The snails have their votes split equally. :-)

[fiske]

If you are looking for snails to put in your african cichlid tank, most everything will be eaten. I've tried trumpet snails before thinking that they were small, tough, and nocturnal and might survive but they didn't.

For your tetras, as Greengrass said, mystery snails would be a good bet. As far as exploding populations go, a balanced aquarium will have several limiting factors to control that. And if left over food or abundant algae allows a population spike, populations are easily culled. I just eliminated trumpet snails from a planted tank that I decided to use as a breeder and it only took removing them from the glass three nights in a row.

[Bigbob55]

Mystery snails are the largest freshwater snails that exist (or so I've read). Mystery snails are really just a marketing name for Apple snails.

They lay groups of eggs at the waterline, which are easy to see and be taken out, as well as readily eaten by a lot of fish, so they're very easy to control the population.

They're avaiable for 1-2 dollars at any petstore, or you can get some more variety on ebay. I would get 1 snail per 10 gallons or so.

They get 5-6'' in diameter, and are quite amusing to watch. They also like bubbles.

[Liz]

Mystery snails are the largest freshwater snails that exist (or so I've read). Mystery snails are really just a marketing name for Apple snails.

They lay groups of eggs at the waterline, which are easy to see and be taken out, as well as readily eaten by a lot of fish, so they're very easy to control the population.

They're avaiable for 1-2 dollars at any petstore, or you can get some more variety on ebay. I would get 1 snail per 10 gallons or so.

They get 5-6'' in diameter, and are quite amusing to watch. They also like bubbles.

There are two kinds of "apple snails", pomacea bridgesii and pomacea canaculata, or something. I think they're both pomacea, and I'm not sure how to spell the second one... but yeah. Canas and Brigs. Canas grow to the size of baseballs, brigs I haven't heard get so big, maybe about the size of a grape, a little bigger. I have heard them both called Apple snails, but "Mystery" snail seems more for the Brigs. Canas eat plants, Brigs don't, and the brigs come in all sorts of colors from white, blue, black, red, pink, jade...
Cana:
http://i8.ebayimg.com/03/i/06/ef/9d/1a_1.JPG

Brigs:
http://i16.ebayimg.com/05/i/06/b1/1b/df_1.JPG

Personally, I keep some malaysian trumpets in all my tanks... you can't see them in the day, they live in the gravel and keep it all healthy, and only come out at night. They get around 1" maybe, but they are livebearers and will breed prolifically but I forget mine exist unless I turn on the lights after they've been off a few hours. I've seen an interesting "new" kind of MTS circulating on ebay/aquabid, with spiky shells.
http://i7.ebayimg.com/03/i/06/76/e8/97_1.JPG

Then you have your ramshorns, the curly little pest snails. They make good food for my puffs, and are safe for planted tanks also since they don't eat live plants. You can find overpriced "european blood red" and blue strains on the internet.
http://www.aquabid.com/uploads/fwsnails1145756550.jpg

Then there's the asolene spixi, a snail I have never seen in person but which looks pretty. I haven't investigated it much, so I don't know much about it.
http://i2.ebayimg.com/04/i/06/ef/96/24_1.JPG

There's also a kind of snail called a Marisa, whose shape resembles a large ramshorn.
http://i15.ebayimg.com/02/i/06/d7/5d/ac_1.JPG

There's the run of the mill pondsnail, that looks like a little football and which I don't see for sale anywhere, but it sometimes tags along with plants and things.
http://www.aquabid.com/uploads/fwsnails1146011605.jpg

[TheMightyQueenPixie]

There is a good chance your Africans will kill them. You may have to up your maintenance instead.

[daveedka]

http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50705

dave