- Sep 21, 2006
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Discussion: Goldfish and Snails: Does The Combination Work?
- Thread starter Lupin
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Where I work we circulate several large comet (feeder) goldfish around our tanks and they do eat the smaller pond snails they how ever have been put in with our mystery snails and do not bother them at least as far as I have seen.
- Sep 21, 2006
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- Paul
This is very interesting.
Few questions concerning the comets:
1. How large are they exactly?
2. What were they fed with?
3. How often are they fed?
Are you sure the snails aren't just being deprived of their food by the comets resulting in starvation and death? Have you actually seen the comets gobbling the snails? I can understand injured snails being eaten but not healthy ones with no shell damage.
I have to agree with dex. If it fits in their mouths, they will attempt to eat it. I didn't have trouble with trapdoors and my goldfish, but o the other hand, have been completely unsuccessful at establishing any population of pond or ramshorn snails. Despite numerous introductions of my bigger specimens, they tend to just disappear. Additionally, baby trapdoors never manifest either. I have not tried my pomacea with any of the goldies, as I am afraid to lose them.
I may not be much help... but...
We had some Shubs in a small pond as a kid. The pond maintained a very healthy population of both giant pond snails and Ramshorns.
Never witnessed the shubs eating snails- they could have done... nonetheless, if they did- in that environment snails reproduced faster than they could be eaten.
Not much help with your apples I know... but given enough room and enough snails regular snails can keep populations up with gold fish "relatives" about.
We had some Shubs in a small pond as a kid. The pond maintained a very healthy population of both giant pond snails and Ramshorns.
Never witnessed the shubs eating snails- they could have done... nonetheless, if they did- in that environment snails reproduced faster than they could be eaten.
Not much help with your apples I know... but given enough room and enough snails regular snails can keep populations up with gold fish "relatives" about.
Regardless, I'd be loathe to extrapolate your experiences with the few fish you have with snails over the couple weeks you've had them to all keepers experiences with all goldfish. Beyond temperament differences between breeds and individual fish, environmental conditions, and many other factors can affect a goldfish's behavior, and just because a couple fish were ok with a few snail species, doesn't mean all fish will always be cool with all species.
