Harvesting snails

[ashes]

Hello. I'm curious if any of you have an efficient way of harvesting snails of the right size for dwarf puffers. I have been using floating plants, and transferring the plant back and forth from the snail tank to the puffer tank, because baby snails like to explore these plants. What other methods work? Vacuuming them isn't a great idea because they can grab the inside of the tube and hold on for their life. Grabbing them one by one works, but it's slow. It would be nice to have solid food that only baby snails will eat, but I doubt that exists. An interesting idea someone gave me is to move the adult snails to another tank after they lay eggs, so the babies don't compete for food with adults, but this doesn't really help me harvest them.

[Adam K]

if you get some snails that are till small but still 2 big for the dwarfs hold them in between you fingers and crush them inside the puffers tank...when you crush the snails they drop alot of eggs

i was told this by my LFS and tried t but the tank i did it in i got rid of because i upgraded, anyway i put the tank outside and it still had a small amount of water in it and two or three weeks later i gave the tank to my neighbor and discovered there was literaly hundreds of small snails, i put atleast 50 into a cup and put them in a snail farm tank and now i cant get rid of them if i tried

[ashes]

I had another idea. To vacuum the water into coarse and fine nets, and hopefully catch snails in them.

[Adam K]

is worth a try

[J-P]

I just use an old credit card to scrape them off the glass or pluck them by hand

[Pufferpunk]

Rubber band a piece of cucumber or zucchini & see all the snails eating off of it in the morning!

[ashes]

For the moment I do not have enough adults, so I feed them well without harvesting much. I need more adults to lay more eggs. Perhaps later I'll have glass full of baby snails.

[CyberBob]

Rubber band a piece of cucumber or zucchini & see all the snails eating off of it in the morning!

rubberband? does that make it sink?
I've been trying to find a way to sink my cukes or zukes without boiling them.

[hadla]

i think she meant put a rubberband to hold a rock onto the cucumber to make it sink

[Pufferpunk]

Yep

[CyberBob]

i think she meant put a rubberband to hold a rock onto the cucumber to make it sink

that would make more sense hehe. I figured the rubberband would float. i actually feed my snails daily so they make lots and lots of babies for my hungry puffers to play with. I found a treasure chest ornament with holes that I use to keep the cuke \ zuke underwater. They know exactly where to find food and they makes lots of babies for me. but, yeah they loooove cucumbers. I recently moved a ton of them from one aquarium to another. within one night i must have moved close to 1000. And it was all using just one slice of blanched cucumber. It didn't matter if the light was on or not. I put the sliced cucumber in the water came back in 30 minutes with tons of snails all over it. use my net, scoop em up, put the cucumber back and repeat. It works really good for moving them.

i've also thought of using veggie clips. anyone try them? my LFS sells them and they attack to the glass by suction cup.

[ashes]

The problem with using cucumber, or whatever, is that it attracts my large snails too, and I want snails of a certain maximum size.

I came up with two similar ideas:

Something like a live bearer fry trap, used when guppies give birth, where the baby fish can fit into a second container but the mother can't, so the babies don't get eaten. Anyway, put adult snails in a container with holes the size of the snails wanted. The adults can't escape the container, with a lid full of holes and outside of water to give the snails air, but the babies can escape into the tank. It's like keeping the adult snails in a prison, and allowing the babies to leave.

Second idea is the same, but opposite direction. Bait a baby snail trap with food. A plastic jar, or container, with holes drilled all around it. Baby snails will be able to get inside, but not adults.

The first idea is the most practical. It allows snails to be farmed inside a puffer tank and gives a steady stream of snails to the puffers.

[CyberBob]

I found this guide to be helpful
http://blogs.thatpetplace.com/thatfishb ... pest-trap/

http://www.fosterandsmithaquatics.com/p ... atid=14699

there are cheaper professional ones out there also.
Some are even adjustable for the size snail you want.

http://www.fosterandsmithaquatics.com/p ... atid=21339

This would be my personal choice mainly because of the cost and adjustability.
I just use a shot glass with a blanched cucumber. I come back in a couple hours and harvest.

Hope this helps

[bertie 83]

idea one is good and would work, howwever it is extra bioload on the puffertank, so if understocked poss worth a try if close to stocking level not wise

[ashes]

I have so many plants that I have to add nitrogen/nitrates, and I consider my tank stocked. I have about 36 small fish (5 are dwarf puffers) in 80 gallons. I could put more but I find they're already bumping into each other. I also have two large canister filters. I think the trick is planting the tank extremely thick, and fertilizing the plants as needed, then the bioload issue is reduced.