Breeding Snails. On Purpose.

[MoMa]

We've been getting small freshwater snails donated by the lfs for our 3 green spotted puffers. We've decided to try breeding them. Any tips on what exactly we should be doing?
We have access to the following tank sizes - 10g, 5g, 3 1/2g - have extra heaters/filters/etc.
(ideally we'd like to use one of those).
The snails in question are not trumpet snails, but are very tiny (the largest being 1/8 - 1/4")



Any help would be appreciated!

Cheers!
-MoMa

p.s. sorry about the lack of metric system in our posts.

 

[OohFeeshy]

Any tank will do, pretty much a case of add snails, lots of, some plants, and a bit of vegetable every few days.

 

[voo]

Does the tank need to be heated for pond snails to survive?

 

[voo]

Just found these two sites, might be of some use?

####/articles/puf...ilbreeding.html
####/articles/puf...basicsnail.html

 

[OohFeeshy]

Room temperature will be fine, it's quite often in acceptable tropical temperatures anyway.

 

[MoMa]

Thanks for the response.
Room temperature seems to be fine for these guys.
Should we be using a filter?
We're going to purchase a small bubbler to aerate the water.
Anything else?

 

[fishyfeet]

on some forums you can buy pond snails in large quanaties, these maybe a better bet. di

 

[Inchworm]

Hi MoMa

I breed some small red ramshorn snails on one of my tanks. They are popular items in my aquarium society auctions.

I feed them on lettuce which I freeze overnight to break down the tissue and make it easier for them to eat and digest. Then I weight it down by putting those lead strips (plant weights) on them before I drop them in the tank.

You might not care about this, since they will be used as food for your fish, but I also add a piece of cuttlebone to the filter which adds calcium to the water and helps them develop strong and attractive shells.

Don't worry about using metric numbers. We are an international forum and you will probably see them used both ways. In case you need a converter to understand what our European friends are talking about, this is the one I use:

http/badmanstropicalfish.com/conversion.html

 

[MoMa]

Hi MoMa

In case you need a converter, this is the one I use:

http/badmanstropicalfish.com/conversion.html

haha!!
thank you.

We've since changed up the snail colony set-up, let us know if this is better/okay/terribly wrong.
We're using a 3g (as these guys are miniscule), w/ filter (filter may be too powerful) and heater (room temp. dropped to about 58F last night - set the heater @ 75F), with a very small plant light.
The tank has small gravel substrate and various rooted remnants of plants from other tanks.

We can definitely feed them lettuce and such - other hobby is the garden! Currently they're getting Spirulina.

Yes, these will be food for the GSP's, however, if they're something other local aquarists would want, we're willing to try the cuttlebone.

Again, thank you for the input.