will my betta eat snails?

[CrustaceaCurtis]

So I've been reading up on bettas and want to upgrade my betta's small unfiltered home and buy a fluval spec.

In the meantime, I was thinking of putting my betta in my 20 gallon. There's nothing in there but 11 horned nerite snails.

Most of the snails are very small, and they were kind of expensive. Will my betta eat the snails?

 

[rufioman]

He might...it's hit or miss with bettas and snails. Mine eats mts I've come to notice.

 

[eraagne]

It's entirely up to the betta's personality. Why don't you just switch the betta and the snails? *shrugs*

 

[vwill279]

My bettas have left my nerites alone, but it really depends on the betta's personality. I've heard of some mercilessly hounding and killing snails.

 

[Taari]

My betta leaves my ramshorns alone, but I've actually witnessed my nannacara male eating the pond snails (something I support and encourage) in my 40 breeder. I've had a super feisty female betta in the past that ate ramshorns though, and I've seen bettas nibble on snails antenae.

 

[Kakashi]

It is better that you are introducing the Betta to a new home with the snails already there, that may cull his aggression the the snails as he will be introduced into a new environment and think they were there first. I've kept over 15 or so different betta's in the past 8 years and have kept each one with snails with no problem. Like the above poster said the most problems I had was with a wild Betta, dragonscale who was fairly big for a betta a little over 3.5 inches in just his body, he seemed to like picking on the snails antennae. As soon as I added some other fish it seemed to cull this behavior.

 

[iheartbettas]

I took all the snails out of my betta's tank because he seemed to be flaring at the nerites way too much for me to be comfortable with. He would bite at the shells and the nerites just locked themselves in place until he stopped. I figured if he was flaring out at them too much, it might have been stressing him out a little. with horned nerites, a betta might be able to bite on the "horned" part. Not sure if that would hurt the snail though.