snail?

[sweetshannon]

I hope this is the right forum, if not....please move...
I have been giving my amazon puffers lots and lots of snails, which they are eating very quickly. I know their teeth grow quickly, so I want to breed my own snails. I bought a little filtered 2.5 gallon tank. Did I go too small? Now I am thinking I should have bought a 5 or 10 gallon. Am I wasting my time with this thing? Any tips? I have 5 amazon puffers.
Thanks so much. I have been reading alot on this forum, but haven't found much on snail tanks yet.

[pufferpuggirl]

Actually, I have a snail tank that's about the same size as what you mentioned, and I think it's doing really well for what I need it for, and I have considerably more puffers than you. I also have a red crab living in mine, although I am thinking about moving the crab out and putting him in his own tank.
I'm not certain when I say this, but I think as long as the water quality is good, the snails don't really need much space. I mean, they are just being bred for one purpose and they aren't intended to grow very big -- so I don't see any problem in the tank being small, but that's just me.
My only problem is that my South American puffers (or Amazons) won't eat snails!! They WILL NOT eat them no way, no how. They only eat bloodworm, so I think it's going to be dental treatment for them before the end of the month.
Hopefully you won't have to deal with any of that, at least yours are eating snails!

[sweetshannon]

Thanks so much for your reply! My guys went bonkers for the snails....
What do you feed your snails? I fed them zucchini, but not sure what else.

[pufferpuggirl]

Well because I have the crab in the same tank, I tend to put a crab food made by Sera in there, and the snails eat that as well as the crab. I also put pieces of shrimp in there, again, mostly for the crab, but I read somewhere that some people just use regular fish flake for their snails, so I've been trying that lately. I also have some pellets for my fish that I pop in there every once in a while.
Another thing I read is that the more you feed your snails, the more babies you will have. Not sure how accurate that is, but I know when I was feeding my fish twice a day instead of just once a day, I had an explosion of snails in my community tank (don't anymore due to putting some dwarf puffers in there).

[Pufferpunk]

There's a snail breeding article in our Library.