Cycling with pest snails?

[Terrance]

Is it ok to cycle a new tank with some pest snails that breeds easily? They produce a lot of bioload. After the tank is done cycling, I can scrap many snails off the tank and put in one puffer to quarantine him. After 4 weeks, the tank can become its permanent home and the puffer will eat any snail that may reproduce. What do you guys think?

[RTR]

I have done so in the past as tests, but it does take quite a mass of snails. Ramshorns or common pond snails will work, but I would not use MTS as they are not suitable for feeding the puffers and are too hard to clear from the tank.

I fed with flake foods and did normal weekly partials. The snails are not sensitive to ammonia or nitrite apparently and withstand any adverse titers during cycling without any symptoms of stress or reduction in fertility. I tried to start with about or more than one and a half times the mass of snails as that of the projected fish to live there.

I never wrote it up, as most folks don't have that mass of snails available readily and would require more time to build up the population to sufficient mass. It did work fine however with little effort on my part.

I also use heavy snail populations to help hold the cycle bacteria in temporarily fishless tanks while awaiting their permanent or QT inhabitants-to-be.

[Pufferpunk]

You can fishless cycle a tank to hold a full bioload in 7-10 days. See the 2 articles on this, in our Library.

[RTR]

Yes, you can and should be able to do so without problems. But realistically very few folks actually do so.

I was a beta-tester for the fishless cycle technique, and my first trial took 4 weeks plus a day or two. The second and subsequent trials got down to 11-14 days.

[CyberBob]

Is it ok to cycle a new tank with some pest snails that breeds easily? They produce a lot of bioload. After the tank is done cycling, I can scrap many snails off the tank and put in one puffer to quarantine him. After 4 weeks, the tank can become its permanent home and the puffer will eat any snail that may reproduce. What do you guys think?

I've used snails to help cycle almost every time.
I don't care if they die and they do seem to help with the cycle.
I've never tried a fishless cycle. But, I have a new 50g tank that I got tonight and will be trying the fishless cycle this time.