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Alrighty, I am thoroughly confused. I'm hearing from all different sources about snails in my tanks and it's separated into;
1. No, snails are the DEVIL
2. Yes, you want snails
3. Only SOME snails are acceptable.
Please help me, I have no idea what to do.
I have a couple tanks and there are only snails in my 10 gallon, recently I've counted around 7. Is that good? Bad?

Snails are perfectly fine in most any tank as long as the tank is not overfed - that's what leads to an explosion of their population. I have at least four different species of snails in my 10 gallon tank, and even more in my tanks at home, and they never cause any problems. People who complain about snails being overpopulated in their tanks are almost always feeding too much.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

You really don't have to do anything unless you want to get rid of them.

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There is water at the bottom of the ocean

There are several pro's and con's to having snails.

Cons:

If you have edible plants, pest snails will put holes in them, and chew their root systems and thats annoying, they are also a major vector species for parasites like worms and protozoa, and can provide some parasites that would otherwise be unable to complete their lifecycle in aquaria a chance to complete their lifecycle and reinfest the fish.

They often get stuck in filter impellors, and clog hydor aerators, which is a nightmare, especially if you happen to be away at the time, and if a large one dies in the tank the water pollution can be surprisingly bad.

Pros: they might eat some algae and scavenge some detrituts for you, but either issues are much better handled through thorough cage maintenance. For puffers, loaches , and some catfish and cichlids they are a free bit of diet variety. Sometimes its nice to watch them do their thing, and it is after all, quite natural to have a few snails in a body of freshwater, it all adds to the interest.

Joy or plague, the choice is yours. To me its just interesting to see them in the few brief days before one of my fish eats them.

Some people just don't like seeing snails. They find them gross. Usually though the problem is overfeeding the tank. Most people probably feed their fish 4 or 5 times what they actually need and then the snails take the extra food and multiply like crazy. Snails are a good indicator of how well your maintaining your tank. An overfed or dirty tank will have 1000s of snails which is where people tend to freak out over them. Snails will also eat any part of a plant that is at all sick or weakened. These parts would usually die anyway but people assume the snails are eating healthy plants because they don't realize anything is wrong and once again freak out about the snails being in the tank.

If you don't overfeed, do enough gravel vacs, and keep the plants healthy then snails do nothing but good things. They help stir the substrate, do eat a little bit of fish waste and algae, and if you have plants their waste is an amazing fertilizer. Some snails don't multiply as bad as others. Such as applesnails where most species lay their eggs above the water line and they can easily be removed. Other snails like trumpets are nocturnal and hide in the substrate all day where you can't see them. That's why people will often say they only want certain types of snails. These types won't noticebly get out of control if you do happen to overfeed or skip a few gravel vacs and leave excess food in there for them. It's all a matter of opinion and how you maintain your tank. Personally I've never had snails get out of control and I've purposely added trumpets, applesnails, and ramshorns to my tanks and ended up with physidae(pond snails) on occasion. Never had a problem.

I have a stable population of snails - I don't overfeed and the population doesn't explode, but they are stable, the plecs eat some of them, some of them survive and breed in hidden little caves. I like them.

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

Well, it seems to come down to a simple question:

Do you like them, or not?

If you like them, then just enjoy them as an interesting addition to the tank and remove a few by hand if they become too numerous.

What kind of snails?
Big pretty ones? Red ramshorns that surf on the water tension?
Or teeny brown hitchhikers offa your plants?

Two totally different scenarios.

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~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~

when i was 12 and just getting into tanks i went to pet smart and got plants and snails hitch hikers and i over fed my fish i guess and OMG!! they were everywere and they hid in the rocks and everything its hard to get rid of them if they get overrun but there was an upside my tank was never dirty lol

good luck

I purposely introduced them to my tank, but they really messed things up. the sheer quantity of driftwood and algae gave them enough to eat and they've managed to make grooves in my impeller housing so the whole thing rattles

This is the first time I'd tried that species in sand, and I won't be doing it again.

Ramshorns I'd take anyway. OK, they eat plants, but if you don't like em, they are easy for you to squish and for other fish to chomp


For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

Personally i would stick with the larger varieties as if you change your mind you can remove them easily. YoYO loaches will eat the small varieties (probally the large one too but im dont really know) that breed constantly as others have said I dont have alot of them just some always still there. They do help maintain a more natural cycle in your tank so you can have less maintaince.

Apple Snails are really nice & interesting, but the "pest" snails will explode. They eat some Algae, but they'll also eat any fish food they'll find.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/corydoras/
Member of the Malta Aquarist Society - 1970.
http://www.maltaaquarist.com

Yo Yos if they get big enough will eat apple snails. I had 2 or 3 ivory snails and they all got eaten by yo yos after being in the tank for only about a month. The yo yos were in there before the apple snails already eating small snails.

My guppies love me squishing the little pond snails. Even the baby guppies and shrimp love em.
I have a couple of large apple snails and if they ever breed well, I have a nice escargo recipe.

if you have a pest snail probem get some clown loaches. they will eat them all . but if you want to have, say, an apple smail to eat leftover food the clown loaches will harass and eventually kill and eat it regardless of size. i learnt all this from experience

hi
woot woot woot woot woot woot

Or ACF's. McGuyver is loving the snails that got accidentally introduced to his tank during a water change (oops!)

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

My apple snail is one of my favourite little guys in my tank. He helps contain algae growth on the tank and on my rocks, he only eats my rotting vegetation, and does't shred my healthy plants.

He has doubled in size, and is so interesting to watch.

He has impressive antennae, his 'air hose' (for lack of a better term) is really neat to watch when he surfaces for a breather - and he's MUCH quicker than I expected.

No complaints here. Very useful little guy.

72G Bowfront. 1 Sunshine Peacock, 2 Yellow Labs, 1 Ps. Elongatus, 1 Blue Ahli, 1 Red Kadanga, 1 Mel. Exasperatus, 1 metriaclima emmiltos, 1 Ancistrus.

14.5G 4 Neon Tetras.

They shouldn't cuase much of a problem, unless you have a million like i did.