The Puffer Forum

Im gonna be starting a snail breeder tank for my 2 gsp's, wht kind of snails are the best for gsp?? I was thinking of getting a few ramshorns, but im not sure. Wht do you guys think?? I'm open to any suggestions. My 45g is at 1.02o atm and I will be getting a skimmer in the next few weeks to. Thanks for the advice and help to

MeggyPuff25 wrote:Im gonna be starting a snail breeder tank for my 2 gsp's, wht kind of snails are the best for gsp?? I was thinking of getting a few ramshorns, but im not sure. Wht do you guys think?? I'm open to any suggestions. My 45g is at 1.02o atm and I will be getting a skimmer in the next few weeks to. Thanks for the advice and help to

Ramshorn and Red Cherry Shrimp all I can think of. Good luck though

Ramshorns will give you the best offering of sustainable snails for them.

i have 2 ghost shrimp with my male red eye, he doesn't eat them, they r just his tank mates now lol they clean up and try to steal his food when i feed him. They'll even come to the top when its feeding time. Anyways they haven't bred yet in there. So how many ramshorns should i get? And how long till they breed and wht else should i add to the tank? I have media from a cycled tank and two rocks from the cycled tank as well. i will be adding a plastic plant in as well. Anything else?? Feeding them how often and wht as well?

Start with half a dozen and they will soon get going, as within a few days I used to feed every other day.I added some java moss to mine but that introduced some nasty looking critters so I wouldnt do that again, you may have better success. I put in a piece of cuttlebone as well so if they munched on that to get some calcium into there shells to harden them up.

Keep the water clean and warm and feed them well and they'll soon multiply.

So once i get them breeding and have babies how often can i give em to my 2 gsp's?? and will they escape the breeder tank?

Give them as often as you like, as long as you have some bigger ones in there to still breed it shouldnt be an issue. You might get some trying to liberate themselves so a decent fitting lid if youve got one will stop this.

I've heard to make sure to put objects in there for them to lay eggs on in clusters

http://www.ehow.com/how_5795589_breed-e ... nails.html

I had a couple of rocks in there, no substrate as it made cleaning harder, most of the eggs laid were usually on the glass sides than on anything else.

Check out the basic snail breeding article in the library if you havent already.

Common pond snails do well also. And they way their shels are it makes em easy to bust open for the puffers. I put some old plastic jewels from an old tank and my snails lay eggs on em all the time. But the glass should be just fine. It'll take a few months for there to be a sustainable population so I'd start with atleast 50 snails to begin the population. This way the puffs still have some to eat while you wait for a population explosion. Took m about two or three months and now I have tons of snails. No need to keep buying em now. But if you want to accelerate to population growth I'd get as many snails the store has to offer( ramshorn/pond snails only). I started with roughly 100 snails 50/50. I do have some live plants for vegetation too. Not Sure if it's helping thou. Most are plastic breeder plants thou. So the babys have plenty of tight spaces to graze safely before coming out. All I been feeding is shrimp pellets which they go crazy for and FW fish flakes oh yea and occasionaly some dried seaweed. I keep the temp between 78-80 and they are going strong. More you can get, the faster there'll be tons of them. Bought my starter snails for 10c each. Good thing the population grew quickly cuz the LFS started charging 29c each. Good luck you shouldn't have any probs. Just takeS a lil patience.

i breed ramshorns - have no substrate and a ood filter - feed them on spinnich and cuttlebone and thy do really well

I breed ramshorns for my gsp's, DP's, and Fahaka. The tank is heavily planted but the snails eat mostly what I feed. They seem to enjoy variety. Cucumber is the favorite but they also like zuccini, sweet potato, carrot, celery, strawberry, tomato, and plantain. I used a small sponge filter and a cascade 80 on a 10 gallon and didn't do a water change for 2 months. I think the plants absorbed the excess waste. I added RCS and guppies for some diversity in diet. Now I spend almost as much time watching that tank as I do the puffers! The puffers don't get too jelous because they eventually get to kill everything in that tank.

Good luck with the snails. My GSP's won't even look at them, even when I crush them. I literally had hundreds of Ramshorns. They won't even eat ghost shrimp or crayfish (now tankmates). They are really picky. All they eat is shelled on shrimp. I even have two moray's in there and they won't eat them either.