The Puffer Forum

Hey all,

Fairly new to the board. Have had my figure 8s for more than a year now and I just cannot seem to get my ramshorn snail breeding going strong enough to feed these guys on any regular basis, not even weekly. I have read this snail breeding article in the library, but I feel like I need some real specifics

Here are my attempts over the past 1/5 yrs:

1. 10 gallon planted with red cherry shrimp, light on 12 hrs day, gravel, mid-80's temp, filtered, cuttle bone in water, fed algae wafer every other day. barely bred enough for ~15 young snails per week. monthly water changes ~50%

2. 9 gallon planted, aquasoil, light on 8 hours a day, mid-80's temp, filtered, cuttle bone in water, fed tons of algae wafers + fish food every day. weekly wc ~50%. This was better, producing 20-25 young snails per week. I eventually abandoned because the nitrates were always 80+ because of all the waste. even doing more wc I could not get the water params under control and did not like the idea of feeding the puffers snails from such bad water.

3. 2 gallon bucket, bare bottom, air stone, mid-80's temp, no light, cuttle bone, fed with carrots and fish food, every other day wc ~85% with aged water to temp. Did not produce many young snails.

4. Currently, 5 gallon bucket, bare bottom, sponge filter, mid-80's temp, no light, cuttle bone, carrots & fish food, every 3-4 days wc ~85% with aged water to temp. A lot more egg sacs, but no young snails. Seems to die off.

All of these scenarios are using tap water, treated with prime, 6 gH, 3 kH, 8-7.6 pH.

What I see happening is the adults snails dying off after their shells turn whitish. I see lots of baby dead snail shells as well, pure white. I am unsure if they are dying off because of a lack of food or something with the water params that are turning the shells white.

What am I missing? I feel like it is not food. Is it the gH or kH? I have a huge cuttle bone piece in the water all the time, so what else should I use to raise these?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Maybe this will help: library/feeding/basic-snail-breeding/

Hi, yes I have read that and used that for some of my setups. Maybe I should just be more clear about my questions

If you are currently breeding snails....

1. What food/nutrients are you feeding? How much in quantity? How often?
2. What size is your tank?
3. What substrate is in your tank?
4. What lighting do you use and how long is your light on?
5. Is your tank planted? What decorations, if any, do you have in your tank?
6. Approximately how many feeder snails (of the right size for your puffer) are you getting out of your tank per week?
7. Are you using a filter? What kind and size? Are you using an airstone?
8. What are you water params in general? Temp? Do you try to keep water params in a certain range?
9. How often do you do water changes and how much do you change? How do you do them so as not to disturb egg sacs or vacuum up babies?
10. What are any other tips and tricks you have learned about breeding snails?

As you can see from this, I cannot seem to get my colony going and I am not sure where the problem is.

Thank you in advance!

1. Slice of cucumber once every 3 days and they eat algae on glass
2. 6 gallon
3. Standard gravel
4. No light, tank is near a window
5. No decorations
6. I usually take out 3 medium sized ones for my duboisi and 5 small ones for my DP once a week
7. Tetra whisper 3-5 gallon
8. Around 7.5 ph, 10 gh, and 11 kh
9. About 50% once every two weeks
10. Honestly not too sure

Honestly I think you are just overfeeding them... My advice would be to put a slice of zucchini in the tank every day and change out the old one before it rots. I have left the slice in there before and had the snails eat all of it minus the seeds, but I know that it was definitely rotten lol so I didn't do that again because I already felt the water quality had dropped from that alone.

Your best bet would be probably to go with option one but let the snails build up a bit before starting to feed them to your puffers. The snails still need time to grow so I don't think you'll be at a point where you are picking up snails to feed them every single day or anything.