The Puffer Forum

so, i'm now feeding my new F8 pond snails for the snail part of "her" diet, and hope to get some free ramshorns from a LFS shop where i've bought plants to breed as well (i saw a few as i was washing the latest plants in tap water, those ones were doomed by that, but now i know the store has them in the plant tank -probably forever unless they treat with copper, which i see no reason for them to do...).

but i've just started wondering, can/will/should F8s eat appropriately sized apple/mystery snails (hatchling/baby size for my current puff)? i was breeding those snails for a bit about 4 years ago (when they were still being called Pomacea bridgesii in the hobby, not yet Pomacea diffusa) so i know i could do so again w/ease. of course i don't see F8s attacking and eating an apple snail about as big -or bigger!- than my lil' fish is, but there are some weeks-months where the newly hatched apples are certainly small enough to eat (by the "eye-rule"), and if you are trying to breed them for color -or for fun- there are always many "surplus" baby snails.... i know some snails, such as MTS can have shells that are too hard for F8s to deal with, but to me small apples have seemed hardly more dense of shell than similarly-sized pond snails.

thoughts?

oh, here is the lil guy/gal and "her" current home 20g long -if this attachment works...

and i'm 90% sure that his/her name is "pumpkin". now i just need to start upping the salinity, i'll be using "instant ocean". if the pictured plants can't handle that i'll deal with it, but i did try to start w/plants that the many articles -here and a few linked from elsewhere- recommended to try in brackish....

Apple snails are a bit too fast-growing to be able to use them reliably as puffer food for the smaller or young puffers. You get a number of them, but they pass through the size window pretty quickly. The apples also tend to expose too much of their body - they are easily attacked by "bite and slurp" techniques rather than "crushing the shell" techniques.

It did no work out for me. Unless you are running several females (and thus some largish tanks), you do not get a very steady supply of the appropriate sizes. You might have better luck than I did, but I traded mine off as a waste of tank space and attention.