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Ok. So...I'm considering adding snails to my tank. Yes, on purpose.

I am NOT looking at apple snails. I am looking at probably trumpet snails, as I have seen some recommendations on using them in planted tanks (which I now have).

Experiences? Good & bad? I do have yoyo loaches, which love to eat snails so I don't think a snail explosion would be a problem (plus it's a 55g tank, plenty of room). As I understand it, malaysian trumpet snails spend most of the daylight time underneath the gravel, scavenging uneaten food and debris, and this helps aerate the gravel for plant roots.

My other option I think would be generic ramshorn snails, but I'm thinking there's a reason I can find these so cheap (like, 100 for 8 bucks with free shipping), and that's that they'll breed easier and possibly be a problem even in a big tank with yoyo's.

Listen! Do you smell that?

I love fancy ramshorns(blue especially) and they don't multiply quite as fast as trumpets but they won't survive in a tank with yoyos. The only snails you can have with yoyos are the trumpets. Anything else even large applesnails with doors on their shell will get eaten. Ramshorns with no shell door and soft shells won't last 5mins. Trumpets on the other hand will multiply at pretty much the same rate even with yoyos. They are just too hard to eat with tough doors on the opening of their shell and the yoyos don't make off with many. However the yoyos will keep the trumpets in hiding. Sometimes with no snail eating fish in the tank and a large population of trumpets they will become quite noticeable during the day. With the yoyos as a threat they will mostly stay in the substrate and you won't notice them except at feeding times. The main thing to keep snail population under control is watch how much you feed. If you overfeed the tank you will have more trumpets than you know what to do with but if you feed your fish the right amount then they generally you have to actually go looking for them to see them in the tank. They are excellent substrate stirrers doing almost all the work in my 55g with 3-4" of eco complete substrate. They also turn leftover food and quite a bit of fish waste into excellent plant fertilizer that is quickly used up. They lessen the need for stirring and gravel vacs a surprising amount in my planted tanks. Do only add them if your sure you won't them though. There is no way to kill them except to treat the tank heavily with copper and leave it that way for a couple weeks or strip the tank and either throw away or soak everything in bleach including substrate. They can hide in their shells with the front completely sealed off for weeks so sometimes they'll even survive short term bleaching.

See, that's the thing. I do want to bring snails into the tank, I'm just trying to decide what I do want to bring in. I know I don't want apple snails. Nerite snails I'm looking at, but the only place I can find those is at azgardens, and they're kind of expensive there. I know they won't breed in my tank, because it's not saltish, but I don't know how they'll do with the yoyo's.

I knew the trumpets would survive with the yoyo's but not how they'd breed.

So with the trumpets, I'm looking at a couple of auctions on aquabid with free shipping. One has 50 for $12, which works out to 24 cents each. Another is 110+ for 20, or 18ish cents each. The third is 100 for 18 - 18 cents each again.

But if they're going to multiply fast, I can go for the 50 for 12 and save some money, and still have plenty to cover the tank in the long run? Or even pay more per snail, on a 20 for $8 auction (32 cents each) maybe?

Listen! Do you smell that?

Even 20 trumpets would probably fill the tank eventually. 50 would be a good starting number.

All other common snails including nerites will be eaten by the yoyos. It absolutely has to have a door on the shell to even survive the first 5mins in the tank, then the shell has to be hard enough to avoid the loaches drilling into it, and the last reason trumpets are the only ones that work is because of how well they bury in the substrate. Even snails that can close up and protect themselves will eventually be starved out by the loaches but trumpets can bury themselves far enough the loaches can't get them while they seek out food. I use to toss plain brown ramshorns into my 29g with 4 yoyos by the dozens. Sometimes I'd collect up 100 or so before I'd dump them all in. Within a few hours they'd have hunted down every last one and killed it. When I had 100s of extra baby applesnails I'd also toss in a dozen or so and by morning they'd all be empty shells. Yoyos love snails and not many can survive in a tank with them.

How fast do the trumpets multiply, though? 55g tank, if I start off with 50 trumpets of various sizes, how long is it going to take before I get overrun?

Listen! Do you smell that?

If you don't overfeed you don't get overrun. Food controls the population of the snails. Their amount and speed of reproduction depends greatly on the amount of food available. If you feed tons of extra food they'll probably take over your tank in a couple weeks. If you feed your fish just what they need it will never happen. If you only slightly over feed then it will take months before the population reaches an excess. I've had mine in the 55g for years and I don't have to do anything to keep their population under control. I don't even have any snail eating fish anymore. Otherwise you can just wait until they come out at night or right after the lights come on in the morning and remove a bunch by scraping them off the glass. That keeps the population pretty low unless your severely overfeeding your tank.

Perfect. Exactly what I needed to know! Thanks!

Listen! Do you smell that?

Hey, I just wanted to mention that it's possible the MTS's (malaysian trupet snails) won't survive in any numbers with the Yo-yo's. I added three clown loaches to a 75 gallon, sand-bottom tank that was chock-full of MTS's (literally hundreds) and within a month or two, there wasn't a single one left. Not sure if Yo-yo's are less effective than clowns, but it's possible they won't survive, especially if the pH and GH are low.

Also, I got free MTS's from someone at applesnail.net. Just paid shipping. So, people will give them away sometimes.

Are you sure there are no snails? Have you dug down into the substrate? When faced with a predator in the tank trumpets go into hiding. They stay down in the substrate where the loaches can't get them. Clowns are also considerably larger and more destructive when it comes to snail eating than yoyos. I've seen snail shells with holes drilled straight thru them by clowns where yoyos tend to ambush the snails while they are out and then harass them to the point they starve to death. That doesn't work with trumpets since all they have to do is hide in the substrate. Clowns generally won't wipe out trumpets though either. The buggers just hide out and if you remove the snail eating fish will pop right back out again.

The great snail experiment will begin in a few days. I went for the 50 MTS auction on aquabid, and the guy said he'd ship them out Monday. I'm only about 150 miles from him, though, so I pointed out if he was avoiding weekend post office delays he could ship them priority mail tomorrow and I'll still get them Saturday.

Listen! Do you smell that?

The snails have arrived! Only about 27 or so of them were large enough to actually put in the 55g tank, so I put them all in my 10g breeder/experiment tank to start with and then picked out the majority of the larger snails to go into the 55...where they spent approximately 7 minutes to right themselves and start questing for food/burying themselves into the substrate.

There were a good number of itty bitty tiny snails, both with and without developed shells in the bag, so I didn't want those to get eaten by the yoyo's or cories. SO I'll leave them in the breeder (which, honestly, could use the cleaning too) until they get bigger.

Listen! Do you smell that?

Cories can't eat them even as tiny babies. They are born with shells. All snails are or they'd suffocate and die since the shell supports all their internal organs including lungs and respiratory system. They are just really small versions of the adults with hard shells and doors on their shells. In fact I've had more trouble smashing the small ones with my fingers. The big ones have a wider end to the shell which makes it a bit weaker so you can crush half the shell. The narrower end doesn't have as much air space and is like trying to crush a rock. If you poked them down into the substrate to give them a head start more than 90% of them would probably survive the yoyos long enough to reproduce. 1 can create 100s so losing that 10% wouldn't matter in the end. However if you do want snails really fast feed them for a week or 2 and you'll probably have a few hundred extra in the 10g. They reproduce while still quite small. I seperate out specific colors and throw them in my shrimp tank until I have a few hundred more of that color then dump them back in the 55g to out compete the colors I don't like as much. One fun thing about snails is it doesn't take long to develop one color strain when your actually trying to make them multiply fast.

I don't really have much of a color strain of the MTS...they're all kinda greenish brown.

ETA: Ok, now sham, I have a question. Apparently, in my shrimp tank (3g Eclipse Explorer), I now have mystery snails. I saw three or 4 itty bitty tiny ones in there on the way out the door from lunch today. I guess they came from eggs possibly deposited on the crystal vals that I put in there from my 55g (I know that I got a few mystery snails with my plants, but the yoyo's have eaten all that I've found in the 55g).

So the question is what is the fastest way to get rid of them from the shrimp tank? I've had a snail population explosion in this tank before, and I really don't want to go through it again. I can't treat the water with anything because the red cherries are super sensitive to ammonia and copper, and I don't have another tank I can move them to.

I can remove the 3 or 4 that I see, since they're tiny, maybe 1/16" big how likely is it that they've laid eggs? And how likely is it there's 100 in the substrate that I can't see yet?

The tank's too small to put one of my yoyo's in there to kill them.

Listen! Do you smell that?

If you don't mind some snails in that tank just not those pest snails then toss in the trumpets. 1 good thing about trumpets is they will kill any other snails in the tank. Not only will they eat the eggs but some varieties have been known to actually attack and kill other snails. If you want no snails in the tank at all then you can either smash the ones you see and hope they go away or pull everything out and dip it in bleach or potassium permanganate. I generally just leave them or toss in some trumpets since snails aren't really harmful so long as you don't over feed the tank and aren't trying to breed fish. I always treat newly setup breeding tanks with cupramine to kill all snails before adding any fish or shrimp since snails will eat fish eggs. Shrimp don't leave eggs laying around so no reason to go all out trying to rid shrimp breeding tanks of them.

I'm just worried about getting overrun with snails like I did a few years ago. 3 or 4 weeks and I couldn't even see inside the tank.

But I didn't know that about the trumpet snails, I'll drop 2 or 3 in there tonight. Thanks!

Listen! Do you smell that?