Omg! Insane!

The only fish an apple snail will eat is dead or dying, they will also eat newborn fry.
 
Occasional consumption of live, healthy fish (often taken whilst sleeping and thereby immobile) is not unheard of with Pomacea spp. (especially P. maculata/gigas, P. insularum, and very large or protein-deprived specimens of all species; see this identification guide).

Look to http://www.applesnail.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10176, http://www.applesnail.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7556&highlight=ate, and http://www.applesnail.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4463&highlight=ate for personal experiences as regards predatory tendencies.

The first thread proposes the following possibilities:

Unless you have severly protein-deprived bridgesii that show carnivorous tendencies all the time (do you feed tuna or anything to them?) then the fish probably had just died or just suffered some injury that allowed the snails to get to him. Bridgesii snails really have to work at it to catch something as fast as a guppy, and it only occurs in a few cases:

- snail was subjected to starvation conditions at some point in the past, either from the "all algae" diet or just not being fed at all. They are forced into eating tankmates out of necessity, and a lot of these snails don't stop the behavior even after propper care and food is administered.

- snail is regularly fed tuna or some othe kind of meat. Some snails will make the connection between tuna and guppies pretty fast and, well...you can tell where that goes.

- the fish is injured and immobile, and the snail happens upon it and starts to chew on it. Most snails will do this as a normal reaction looking for food even if they don't think the fish itself is necessarily food, the same way they will chew on your fingers.
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From the second (of P. insularum):

They'll eat anything, literally. Mine preferentially like to eat filter sponges now I think they lean towards the protein side when they are young, and then they seem to gradually drift over to eating more plant matter as they get older.

There are a few things to keep in mind with these guys:
- they get BIG, around 4"
- they have been known to eat fish that don't move fast enough
- the young ones will go after injured snails that can't close up properly
- the big ones will sometimes go after fingers, and some will bite quite hard

Basically just be careful with compatability. I don't trust my big 4"ers in with my little guppies for instance, but they do fine with an 8" dojo loach for company.
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From the third:

I will tell you, snails WILL catch a fish and eat it. I've had this situation before, with 2 snails chasing down guppies and cherry barbs, in tandem, then munching them like tasty morsels. I know others have had snails catch and eat guppies, but this is the first I've heard of them eating tetras.
Here is what I've noticed: Canas tend to prefer more plant-based and fresh veggie type foods, while Brigs will gravitate towards more meat-based, fatty foods. The fish-catching snails I had were brigs, and I think they did it because I had only been feeding them algea wafers. This was years ago. I posted on this very board about it, and was reccomended to add some protien to their diet. I went out that very day and got some shrimp pellets, and they only ate one fish after that. If you have Brigs, make sure you feed them a protien-rich food as part of their diet. It worked for me, although I know there's someone on the board who has a snail who has a balanced diet, but still catches and eats fish. Apparently, it's just possessed by the Devil....LMAO!!!!!
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Un-huh, sure. I especially like the bit about a snail biting pretty hard - which is quite an accomplishment for a creature without jaws and with only a rasping device. It may be a good rasp, but it is physically incapable of a bite.

Learn to evaluate things that you read on boards, or take everything with a grain of salt until you have verified it yourself.
 
I still reckon they do it by mental telepathy, LOL...
 
RTR said:
Un-huh, sure. I especially like the bit about a snail biting pretty hard - which is quite an accomplishment for a creature without jaws and with only a rasping device. It may be a good rasp, but it is physically incapable of a bite.

Learn to evaluate things that you read on boards, or take everything with a grain of salt until you have verified it yourself.
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That’s a matter of semantics – the extension and withdrawal of a snail’s radula (and associated “mandibular” movement thereof) is both visually and sensationally analogous to the bite of an organism with possession of articulated jaws. I do not believe – especially in the absence of any mention of water parameters, diet, and taxonomic extraction – that the apple snail in question necessarily captured and dispatched any of its tankmates; I merely wish to refute the notion that Pomacea spp. are inherently incapable of doing so, or that anecdotal accounts to that effect are entirely without precedent.

Food and feeding

The feeding habits of ampullariids are microphagous, zoophagous, and macrophytophagous, none being mutually exclusive (Estebenet, 1995). Ciliary feeding on particulate matter on the water surface has been described for some species (McClary, 1964). Some species will feed on insects, crustaceans, small fish, etc., mostly as carrion but not always so (McLane, 1939; Estebenet, 1995). Some species (e.g., Marisa cornuarietis, Pomacea canaliculata) will attack other snails and their eggs (Demian and Lutfy, 1966; Robins, 1971; Aldridge, 1983; Cedeño-León and Thomas, 1983; Cazzaniga, 1990b). The predominant habit, however, is macrophytophagous, which from an agricultural pest standpoint is also the most significant. Andrews (1965a) described the feeding behaviour of Pomacea canaliculata in detail. P. canaliculata shows preferences among different food plants; its rate of growth correlates with its feeding on the preferred plant; and it is able to detect its food plants from some distance using chemical cues in the water (Estebenet, 1995), as can Pomacea paludosa (McClary, 1964). However, despite exhibiting such preferences, P. canaliculata appears relatively generalist and indiscriminate (e.g., Schnorbach, 1995), and, as suggested for Marisa cornuarietis by Robins (1971), it may be ‘more pertinent to determine what the animal does not eat than what it will eat’. In fact, anecdotal comments suggest that Pomacea canaliculata is particularly voracious compared to other ampullariids (Neck, 1986).
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From http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/ppd/Entomology/Snails/AMPchap.htm (emphasis mine).
 
UHhhh.....Yeah...what veneer said... :rolleyes:

Personally, I've seen how 'out of it' my fish are when they are sleeping...and how it can take a bit of time for them to come around when I turn the light on....I still think it's possible for a snail to learn to take advantage of that sleep state..and dispatch a healthy fish who would otherwise not be possible to catch. Maybe not every snail would learn to do that...but I believe it's possible. (I left my theosaurus....back at the farm so I thought I'd type this out in words the lay folk could understand..:D )

I Once saw a joy riding snail. The thing had learned that the bubbler could be a pretty fun toy and it actually purposefully would make it's way over to that side of the tank and 'catch a ride' on the air bubbles. It would flip and swirl it's way to the top of the tank in the column of bubbles...slowly float back to the bottom of the tank, head straight back to the bubbler and do it all over again. Pretty funny actually...lol...
 
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I must confess that I also enjoy the acceptance of anecdotal evidence of snails capturing live healthy fish, biting the tank-keepers, etc. from foks who absolutely categorically reject anecdotal reports concerning iodide supplements for crustaceans.

But consistancy is over-rated I suppose.
 
Its fairly arrogant to say that its simply not possible. Frankly pretty much anything is possible, on the other hand though, is it likely the snail killed a healthy fish....no. I will not sit here and say that it is impossible for the snail to have caught and killed a healthy fish, but it is my educated guess that the fish was dead when the snail got to it. However you will never know exactly what happend because you did not witness it. Also listing your water parameters as "good" or "fine" is not an adaquate response. You need to provide numbers with the pH,Ammonia,nitrite,nitrate for us to help you.
 
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