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What are your thoughts on snails and clams? Will the snails eat my plants? Take over my tank? Can I have clams if I have gravel? And are either of them truly beneficial to the ecosystem?

The kind of snails you add to your tank will determine whether or not they'll harm your plants. Malaysian Trumpet Snails, for example, will not harm your plants, whereas certain types of Ramshorn snails and others will. What did you have in mind?

Not too sure about the whole freshwater clam thing. If your gravel is small I'm sure they'll be ok, though I guess by "they'll be ok" I mean, "they'll burrow underground in one spot and do nothing" (not to in any way try to convince you not to get them, I'm just not a fan) I don't think they'll harm anything in your aquarium, though I have read that, when they reporduce, they're somewhat parasitic - though someone else will have to elaborate on that point, as I'm just repeating what I've read.

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Back in the saddle!

The larger applesnails will eat plants but the smaller ones won't. Ramshorns I'm not sure about. Malaysian trumpet snails won't. Clams will live in gravel provided the rest of their environment is good. They are filter feeders that don't move so they need to be in a tank with lots of water movement. In the wild they live in rivers and streams where the water is constantly being moved past them. It is possible to feed them by crushing flakes or shrimp pellets into powder or using fry foods and squirting them in front of the clams. Some clams reproduce by releasing parasitic offspring that leave white marks on fish that looks much like ich. The common one sold that doesn't do this is the asian gold clam but I don't know the names of the other safe species.
As for benefits to the tank. Snails and clams will clean up excess food so it doesn't rott in your tank and make nitrates. However they also don't digest their food very well so I definitely wouldn't get them to help with water quality. Even non plant eating snails will nibble at dying or less than completely healthy plant life. My snails help keep the plants looking healthy both by eating the dying leaves/stems(also helps avoid me having to trim and remove) and by providing lots of good fertilizer for root feeders. Snails are not effective algae eaters. I keep them more for looks but I think part of the success of my planted tank is due to the snails turning the substrate and providing lots of fertilizer.

wow, thanks for those responses. I order two gold clams and will see how they work out. I am not sure about the snails...they make me nervous. I am trying to educate myself on them, but its been difficult to find good info on them.

How about shrimp? I am basically looking for something to keep the substrate clean and help with keeping my plants healthy.

You can keep your substrate clean and healthy enough for plant growth by doing "partial gravel-vacs" with your weekly water changes. What I mean is, don't dig too deep down into the substrate, just let the vac hover over top and pull up all the excess debris - then go into the substrate maybe 1cm or so, just to get some stuff off the top. In the areas around 2-3 inches around each plant, it's best not to dig into the substrate at all - the mulm down there is what provides nutrients to the roots of your plants and you dont want to get rid of that.

Snails will help keep the gravel clean, but without some sort of natural control for them (loaches etc.), there's a good chance their population will explode and you'll have more of them than you know what to do with. Good luck

Last edited by NowherMan6 at 20-Apr-2005 13:03

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Back in the saddle!

Nothing will eat fish/snail waste. The fish and invertebrates that clean the bottom and eat left overs tend not to digest their food well and so leave almost the same amount of mess they cleaned up. They may help turn extra food and old plant growth into fertilizer easily used by plants but the only real way to keep the gravel clean is to do gravel vacs. With lots of fast growing plants that draw their nutrients mostly from the substrate you might get away with a little less gravel cleaning. Basically you have to do gravel vacs no matter what.
Some shrimp eat left over food, some eat algea, and some are filter feeders like clams taking tiny particles out of the water.
Aside from pest/pond snails malaysian trumpet snails are the only ones that can take over a tank. Their population will stop growing through if you feed less. Applesnails lay eggs above water so the population is easily controlled. Shrimp and clams don't seem to reproduce very well in tanks. My clam population has stayed pretty much consistent to what I first put in the tank.

Sham! You saw straight through me ! I don't want to have to gravel vac... But I guess there is no getting around it! BTW, do you like the clams in your tank? I am getting 2 this week.

The clams don't really do much which is a main reason they aren't popular for aquariums. Another reason is their ease of starving to death. Make sure when you add them you set them in a high current spot near a filter intake/outtake not behind a cave or in a group of plants. Most of the ones I lost wandered into caves or behind something where the current wasn't strong and starved. Every so often I dig all mine up to see how many I have and what sizes to tell if they are reproducing. Then I get to watch them move around and find a new spot in the substrate. It is kind of neat to watch their little suction holes move but the 2 holes and the edges of the shell are all you see majority of the time. They do interest people that see my tank and some times I end up pulling one out for someone to see. Their bright gold shells with brown/black stripes can make neat decorations too. I like having them and they have their moments but overall they live in the background and aren't very noticable. I got 50 of them cheap off aquabid.com and they cause no trouble in my aquariums so they are here to stay.

Cool Sham. That was a very generous answer, so thank you. My last question is if they die, will they smell bad and will they upset the tank?

Dead anything smells horrible. That's how you can tell a dead snail. Clam and snail bodies are made mostly of water so they dissolve pretty well and I've never had water quality problems. There isn't much body to a clam. If I saw a dead one I'd clean it out but usually I don't know I've lost one until the empty shell works it's way to the top of the substrate.