Bettas and pond snails

Celura

Celura

Crazy Betta Lady
Jan 16, 2004
185
0
0
50
Austin, TX
www.celura.net
Can you keep a Betta with regular pond snails? These are not Ramshorn or Malaysian Trumpet Snails. They are the regular pond variety that my boyfriend breeds to feed his Dwarf Puffers.

He currently has a 5g snail-breeding tank and would like to add a Betta, but isn't sure if the Betta would eat the snails or not. Does anyone know? He doesn't want to kill off the snails, but would like to add a Betta if he could.

Thank you in advance for your help. :)
 
Itll be fine. The betta might look at them from time to time and mistake them for food - at which point he'll get a big mouthful of shell and decide that he's not that hungry afterall;)
 
This was posted on another site when I asked the same question:

"I would not suggest doing this for a few reasons. The first is that snails tend to dirty water pretty quickly, and bettas like nice clean water. Also it is quite likely that your betta would eat the snails. I'm guessing that pond snails are pretty small, so they wouldn't stand too much chance against a betta. Even with larger snails bettas have often eaten their eyes and feelers. This is not only a problem for the snails, but if your betta eats alot of them it could make him sick. "

Any input or feedback on this at all? Especially since a couple of you have snails and Bettas together, that would be helpful. May I also say that your story made me laugh out loud, Vamp. :D

Thanks again for your help, everyone! :)
 
If bettas really ate snails I wonder why I have about 300 of the tiny ones crawling around my 10g planted....lol

If you have big snails like mystery snails, SOME bettas will occasionally get a little uppety and nibble at an antenna here or there, but the snail often pulls it in before much happens. Plus, you mentioned that the pond snails are small - probably too small to have any antennas that would entice a betta.

As far as snails "dirtying" the water, not if the tank is kept clean. Fish eat and poop too:p And, while I agree that bettas are often (mistakenly - rather, exaggeratedly) thought of as fish that can live in deplorable conditions, I have a hard time accepting the fact that snails "dirty" the water too much for a betta to live in. They do live in "mud" puddles in the wild....

You'll be fine. Any snails that the betta MIGHT eat as teensie babies will be negligible. And you know that saying about rabbits? it applies to snails too:) AND, in the event that you put a betta in and it eats your snails, I will personally send you via mail about 300 of them to replace what you may have lost:D
 
My betta ,"a.k.a sushi interestingly enough" is also in a 5 gallon planted tank. He's got qute a few little pond snails keeping him company and I've never even really seen him pay any attention to them. Also I'm preety sure that the fish will produce a lot more waste than + weight of inverts cause they move around a bunch more.
Hope this helps
Chris
 
Pond snails will not be eaten by bettas. We have numerous pond snails of all sizes in all three of our betta tanks and no snails get eaten. One betta, which we got recently and kept in a quarantine tank for a while, did try to eat some small snails when first introduced to his new 5 gallon home. He quickly spit them out and gave up on the idea. I think pond snails are good for a freshwater aquarium. They eat a lot of waste products such as leftover food, fish poop, decaying plant matter, etc. and their poop is relatively benign. Regular vacuumming of the gravel substrate is a really good idea if you have snails (of course, it's a good idea anyways).
 
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