Snails: Good, Bad, or Just Plain Ugly?

[*Sarah*]

I noticed a little snail crawling across the glass in my 10g planted that is cycling, and I'm wondering if I need to do something to remove them, or if they are ok just staying in the tank?

[Chrona]

Well, I personally don't like snails. They tend to take over the tank and removing all of the buggers is annoying later on.

[Rue]

I just vacuum them out when I do the gravel...seems to keep the population under control...

...other than their rate of reproduction, they don't bother me at all...

[Chrona]

Escargot maybe?

[Rue]

...escargot are land snails...but give it a try and let us know how they taste...

...mind you, good luck finding a tiny TINY escargot fork...

[*Sarah*]

So they don't destroy plants like the ones that used to kill everything in my flowerbeds? What do they eat?

[Rue]

Your plants should be fine...for the most part...I haven't had any noticable problems with plant getting munched on...but I did read some plants are more likely to be eaten than others...but I'd have to look it up again to tell you which ones...

I think they primarily live on excess fish food...and for that reason they're nice to have...they produce very little waste on the whole (unless you're completely overrun by them)...

I've been trying to find a species name for the tiny little white ones...I think they're a Ramshorn...but I need to do a bit more searching...

[Rue]

...btw...some of the other common snails will eat plants...

[cocoa_pleco]

I really like snails

[xoolooxunny]

if you do your hw, you can buy some snails that need BW to reproduce, because they eat algae off the plant leaves and glass, along with other wastes on the bottom, they're good to have. In my case, they lay eggs like there's no tomorrow, so i just take a bunch out when i do water changes or plant trimming.
i do have these really cool looking ones that are shaped like ice-cream cones, sometimes one of the shell rows is a different color like red or green, really neat...

[cocoa_pleco]

i need glass snails for my SW tank. supposed to be beautiful

[Severus]

I have a large yellow mystery snail and he is pretty cool. He is the only one in the tank so i dont have to worry about snail babies. I already dealt with that!

[sergo]

i see one here and there in my tank. i think my bettas eat them because i only see one or two every now and them and they are never the tiny ones. i don't mind them as i know they eat algae. i may have a problem if i start to see a lot. i say if you have a couple to leave them be until the population starts to rise a lot.

[*Sarah*]

Ok, thanks guys!

[jweintraub]

When i first noticed that snails had taken a ride on my plants I counted 5 of them and they were TINY! There's so many snails in my tank right now I couldn't try to count them if I wanted too. I generally take 4-5 out a week and throw them in my Cichlid tank where they get torn to shreds and it's a nice live snack for my Lombardois'!

[sergo]

i had some hitch a ride on plants too but i swear bettas eat everything including tiny snails which i never see anymore, just a couple of midsize ones.

[Severus]

Bettas have been known to eat snails, but the real snail killers are CLown Loaches! They killed about 50 in my tank in a week

[*Sarah*]

I like the look of Clown Loaches, but I saw some at my LFS that were HUGE...so I don't think I could accommodate them at this point.

[Faith_at_Large]

I used to eat periwinkles growing up in the east, they are salt water snails. In my aquarium, I prefer to choose what snails go in, and I am not really keen on hitchhikers; however, a ten gallon tank is a nice place for a beautiful Betta splendens and they think snails are delicious too. My first Betta even tried to go after my mystery snail - attacked it constantly and tried to keep it from coming up for air. I will be looking for a snail for my ten gallon tank soon. I was going to get a golden Mystery snail, but I saw a Betta breeder who sold specialty snails and she had one with pink stripes - absolutely georgeous.

[Sasquatch]

We got some hitchhikers with our plants too. At the starts, they were cute and kinda funny.

Now they are pests and are overruning the tanks. We'll have to try the lettuce thing to bring the numbers down and I'll pick some out this weekend when I re-arrange the plants. It's a real infestation.

But at least I don't have this in my tank.

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[muffin]

I really don't mind the one snail that I have in my tank. However I swear that when I added it my fish got all kinds of stressed out and I started losing them... but it may have been other things.. Like I think my tank wasn't completely cycled and it claimed one of my fish.. anyways.. I wouldn't want more than one just due to the fact that they are the bunnies of the water... ugh..
Enjoy the little guy...

[Severus]

Yea, they seem to multiply exponentially!