Snails good? or Snails bad?

Hello.

I just wondered what everyones opinion of Snails are? Are they good or bad for a planted tank?

What has been your experience? Algae eaters or plant destroyers?

Cheers

Depends entirely upon the species, and how you feel about snails in general.

For example, take Pomacea bridgesii, which is commonly referred to as a mystery snail, and sometimes an apple snail. In my experience they eat debris and dead leaves, but never harmed live plants. Pomacea canaliculata, also sold as an apple snail, is a living lawnmower.

In the smaller realm, snails commonly knows as 'pond snails' are plant safe, as are Malaysian trumpet snails.

This may be more specific than you want, but I bought two ramshorns, and they had to go live in the plantless quarantine tank due to their voracious plant consumption. When I trim my tank, I put the trimmings in for them, and they're gone overnight.

'Eric Schreiber' <eric at ericschreiber dot com> wrote in message

My tank got infested with these little round snails. They crawl all over the place eating and ruining my lily plants. I tried some snail remover, but even at 4 times the recommend dosage I still have snails crawling around (but it's only been 24 hours since I added this stuff). I also don't like that thought of 1000 snails contributing to the biological load of the tank. IMNSHO, they are a pest and should be removed.

I hate pest snails and love mystery snails. My pest snails consist of red rams horn which eat Some of my plants, hygrophiela . that is my favorite plant and I changed to sand. ZI also constructed a screen type thing, where I can rake the sand and sift out the pest snails. And am going to set up a puffer tank and thats where the snails are going to go. My clown loaches do not touch the snails.

I also have pond snails aka tadpole snails. I do not want to hurt my fish so I don't use the had a snail or snailicide.

My sister tried snailicide and it wiped out the snails, but weakened her guppies and soem of them died, she set u a new tank for them and stopped the snailacide.

I have a 55 gallon tank with just mystery snail sand the pest snails vanished. But were talking alot of mystery snails waiting on going to the LFS. I feed that tank a head of lettuce a day.<also other foods>

Any snail remover that contains copper will get rid of them fast. It however doesn't always work on the eggs so it may take a few applications.

On 05 Dec 2004, the world was enlightened by Ook's opinion about...

I have a different take on a '1000 snails'. I had a juvenile Malaysian trumpet snail hitch a ride with a platy purchase. In no time at all I had lots of MTS in my 55g. The snails get down into the gravel and eat the gunk I miss when I do a gravel vac. I no longer have a nitrate problem and my water quality is the best it's ever been.

I love snails.

Malaysian Trumpet Snails are the most 'plant friendly' of the smaller snails. They clean thr detritus off the bottom, and consume their weight in algae daily.

Rams horn snails are plant killers.

I fix that problem with weather loaches which will 'hoover' the rams horns out of the shell, but don't seek to kill all the MTS.

My fav. plant for a background is Java Moss. It also reduces the ammonia / nitrogen load of the tank and gives fish a high fibre diet.

It grows faster than my fish will eat it. A good addition to any tank.

Are any of the snails of aquaria edible?