swordtail pops snail

[khombre]

hello everyone

one of my female swordtails in my pond hasn't been eating for days now but she appears to be healthy though

when i was watching it this morning.. i saw it plucked a snail (i have lots of unknown snails in the pond, they dont do much damage though) sticking on the sidewalls of the pond so the snail started doing a backstroke hehe the snail was floating around i mean, then all of a sudden, i saw the female swordtail pluck the snail from its shell, i watched it some more and the swordtail didn't spit it out.. so i guess it could have eaten the snail?

do swordtails really eat snails?
i haven't read something like this in most profiles of swordtails so im kinda wondering if this is normal..
was eating a snail safe for my swordtail??

thanx to anyone who will help thanx :duh:

 

[maaltan]

I dont know. I've never noticed it.

Although I have noticed that they are pretty good at learned behavior. do you have any other fish in the tank that eat snails, was it kept in a tank at the LFS with loaches of some sort, or maybe as a long shot maybe adjacent tank where they can see?

Do you periodically crush a few snails and allow the fish to eat them?

I never got mine to eat snails but i made a little feeding contraption made out of clear plastic jar with a hole cut in side about 1.5 diameter of biggest sword . I suspended a tubifex worm cube in the jar and watched. most of the fish just bashed thier nose against the "invisible wall" A few stumbled into the hole. after about 3 feedings they were all making a bee line for the hole and hitting the cube without hesitation.

One found it by accident, the others learned from it. amazing really.


No i wasn't trying to be sadistic... was I? I was just bored and tried an experiment. now sadistic would be not putting a hole in the jar or making it just large enough where fish would get stuck in it.


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another thing. why do the smileys on here promote violence against the loveable walmart icon. all hail king price cutter guy. the big brother image that will be displayed on the viewers when walmart takes over.

 

[khombre]

right now there are only swordtails in the pond..

im not sure if it ever lived with loaches because they were just given to me as "gifts"..
my friend gave me 9 swordtails (1 male, 8 females) 2 females died of suffocation when he gaved them to me coz he placed them in an enclosed jar would u believed that? the male died 2 weeks ago for unknown reasons..

but there are hundreds of them now, lots of little ones, and there are new males too

well back to the snail popper, this one's got issues though..
when she got here, she had this huge scar encircling her head and she was really aggressive towards anything that moves... she's still aggressive as of now.. i don't know wat caused her scar but she cud have had a violent experience of some sort, she doesn't move a lot... stays in her territory and chases anyone who gets near then goes back beside her plant hehe

i dont see the others popping snails though :look:

 

[Holly9937]

I know that bettas will eat snails if they are small enough, so if the snail is small enough to fit in its mouth, I don't see why not!! Think of it as a free treat

 

[Tetras_Rule33]

Yeah i had three pond fish eat 2 snails i brought home back in the day. Tisk tisk tisk.

 

[khombre]

so does this explain why she is no longer interested w/ the pellets??

found lots of empty snail shells in the gravel lol