New 20 gallon freshwater aquarium - any fish suggestions?

Hm, I'll consider those. How big do they get?
 
Ramshorns can get around an inch, but most of the ones in my tank only get to about half an inch. Pond snails can get up to half an inch. But again, the ones in my tank are much smaller.

Again, both of these types of snails have the potential to overpopulate to the point of being considered undesirable nuisance pests! Overfeeding can encourage population explosions.
 
I found that ramshorns and pond snails are attracted to algae wafers, so are super easy to bait and remove. I also suspect my ghost shrimp were eating small pond snails, because I'd often find the shrimp picking over snail shells.
 
Lettuce works really well to remove them as well. But in general I have found that ramshorns don't reproduce as quickly as pond snails or MTS. I actually really like ramshorns and have kept them in multiple aquariums, used for food for loaches and my dwarf puffer, without them over running it very easily. Meanwhile I was given a tank that someone had added one MTS to and though I had a DP that I fed every other day a small amount, baited snails, did a lot of water changes and gravel vacuuming I still would find at least 100 MTS that would come out of the gravel at night if I checked the tank. . .
 
Alright, I'll go with a Ramshorn snail. I was wondering, Have you ever had a Tetra whisper 1-3i power filter? I'm looking into getting one, and I have read some reviews, but am wondering what you think of this product yourself.
 
I've never used them personally, but I had customers that loved them. If you're just planning on having a snail in the tank you could almost just get a back of bio media for the fluval/Aquaclear filters and use those instead of the filter pads. Fill it full of plants and you'll have a pretty nifty little set up.
 
If you add ramshorns, you may need to provide them a calcium source for their shells. I used a cuttlebone sold for birds. Boil it for a few minutes and it'll sink to the bottom. I let a little algae grow on the cuttlebone so the snails would graze on it. Ramshorn shells can etch badly if they experience calcium deficiency.

Mark
 
Good point, I didn't think of suggesting that as I always made food for mine. I read on here a while ago there was a suggestion of using tums as well, or simply the calcium tablets sold in stores. I went with one of the jello recipes and added reptile calcium powder to it, but I fed it to all of my fish so it wasn't hard that way.
 
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