I suddenly find bladder snails more interesting…

[Magnum Man51 165]

now that generally I feed twice a week… Ok I still hate them in tanks I’m raising fry, and need to feed more often, or in my shrimp tanks, where they eat as much of my shrimp blocks as the shrimp do… but now in my bigger more mature tanks, with a biweekly feeding schedule, they are limited to only one or two, and at that rate they are much more interesting… even my problem tank, that used to have 100’s of pest snails is now down to a handful at best… their numbers really are related to over feeding… I’ve had one or two in my hillstream tank now for the last 6 months, and while I actually try to grow plenty of algae for the fish to eat, the snail numbers don’t seem to expand with available plant matter, like they do with fish food, or shrimp blocks… on my mature tanks , I’m seeing the one or two, as signs of a healthy, natural aquatic environment…

 

[Mazain]

even my problem tank, that used to have 100’s of pest snails is now down to a handful at best

I had so much communities and fish breeding in my fish tank and each time snails were never the highlight or main topic.
My trumpet snails doubled when the tank was converted to a discus tank.
Its hard to catch them or see them since they always are borrowed under the substrate.
The pros of having them has given me no mulm and the option of not vaccuming the substrate. After their cycle the trumpet shells act like caves for neo-caradina shrimps making the shells refuge heavens.

 

[GaryE11 9]

Bladder snails are interesting, but so are tapeworms. Have you ever looked into their life cycle? Fascinating stuff.. And E. coli bacteria - yeah, they too are fascinating creatures. Mosquitos? Ticks? Yeah.

As I've reduced the amount of processed food I use, and gone over to more home cultivated live food, the number of bladder snails has dropped radically. Most fishkeepers don't take that route and get overwhelmed by pest snails at least once, often for decades. I still tend to crush them on sight, as much as I hate to do that. They lurk in the shadows of my tanks, in small numbers.

Malaysian rot in the gravel snails are around too. Meanwhile, I like ramshorns, but they seem to be the easiest to defeat. They don't eat killie or cory eggs, a feature I respect. The other pest snails are absolute killers.

 

[TwoTankAmin43]

I have always had a few tanks which produce a lot of pest snails because I had a number of grow tanks which got fed heavily. So, I got assassin snails when my clown loaches got too big to eat the pest snails. At least I assumed this was the case. As far as I can tell the loaches suck the meat out of the shell to eat it. As my clowns grew over time I was afraid the biggest ones would inhale the whole snail including the shell. I worried that sharp shell or their fragments could cause internal damage.

But I also had assassin snails in tanks with no loaches at all. So, I got assassin snails to deal with pest snails. When the assassins cleaned out the snails in a tank, I began to harvest snails from the grow tanks and drop them into the tanks with the assassins. And they reproduced from the bounty of live food. However, I can sell the assassins so they became a small source of income for my fish costs. I have assassins now in 5/11 tanks. I only have two grow tanks now, but they produce a lot of food for the assassins.

I also still have sidthimunki loaches in one tank and they are great at eating smaller size snails. Sometimes I will drop in smaller pest snails for the sids as a treat. I also got a small container of Snail food as a part of my recent order to restock my dwindling supply of Ebo-Aquaristik foods.

 

[SammyTargo]

The pros of having them has given me no mulm and the option of not vaccuming the substrate. After their cycle the trumpet shells act like caves for neo-caradina shrimps making the shells refuge heavens.

Please elaborate...

I've never kept trumpet snails for the sole purpose of them just existing in soil and causing problems I can otherwise avoid, I keep a small 5 gallon brackish setup to breed Septaria porcellana, or the marbled limpet nerite snail. I use the offspring in a mix of selling, and algae cleanups in new setups as they are by far the best cleaners in terms of snails at least in my book. (a fun note I wanted to add for no reason: I kept an similar setup back in the day for the exact same reasons with Caridina Gracilirostris, or red nose shrimp, which I kept at 15 ppt during hatching and slowly lowered to 6-8 ppt at settlement). How exactly do neos use a tiny trumpet snail shell to hide? Maybe you are referring to the shrimplets? I am very curious and intrigued.

 

[Mazain]

How exactly do neos use a tiny trumpet snail shell to hide? Maybe you are referring to the shrimplets? I am very curious and intrigued.

Yes, it's the shrimplets that hide. The shrimplets and shrimps got plenty of vegetation and logs to forage but they still like the open where the snail shells are.
My bosemani rainbows are the only fish that eat shirmps but they dont go frenzy on them.
Most of my shrimp pairs have cross-breed and wild caught colors that have survived.
The orginal cherry red, golden yellow, light blue and snowball pairs are not to be seen. I'm guessing they are hiding or not survived.