The Puffer Forum

I'm having trouble operating the search function, so I thought I'd just make a new topic.

I have a 2 gallon hex tank that I'd love to use to breed snails for my future puffs. It will feature a mini heater and filter.

Can this tank be a miniature version of the puffer tank? Meaning, can I do a small layer of sand at the bottom and put a small piece of driftwood and a plant in? The idea of having it be similar to the puffer tank itself appeals to me.

Also, I'd like to have this on my desk, so I thought it might be interesting to have something else in there in addition to the snails. Is there anything appropriate for that? I read that a betta would basically pick everything off and defeat the purpose of a snail breeding tank. Would a fancy guppy be okay? I don't know anything about those.

If not a fish, perhaps shrimp? I'd like to have something in the water column to watch, but shrimp can be interesting as well. Plus, I assume that I could feed small shrimp offspring to the puffs.

Any information at this point is helpful!

I have a 9 gallon hex growing snails right now, it's not even filtered, just a heater and a bubbler with a desk plant lamp clamped on the top. I got an Amazon Sword growing in it and it seems to be doing fine. I keep the water level low, actually about 7 gallons. Occasionally, I dump the sludge from the bottom of my puffers tank in after a few gallon cycle, but not too much. I currently have a bumper crop of ramshorn snails.

I had a hard time getting glass shrimp to live there, they'd be fine for a while and then die (snails don't look fast till you see them make a shrimp carcus disappear) I ended up getting 4 females with eggs, I guess they liked the plant, one by one they're eggs disappeared and I fed them to my GSP. That was about two months ago, I now have 4 baby shrimp that are hard to see but they were born in that tank and maybe they'll live long enough to breed and become food.

For pure snail breeding tank many of us chose to go bare bottom as they poop ALOT. So its easier to maintain. For glass/ghost shrimps, they eat snails... For cherry, U need a planted tank for them to breed properly. So if your main intention is to breed them, U can't really have them altogether in 1 tank.. IMO.

Sorry, until we get a site upgrade, the search function will not work.

whens the site upgrade happening ???

Pufferpunk wrote:Sorry, until we get a site upgrade, the search function will not work.

I normally use Firefox or Chrome but I have found that Explorer does allow me to search the forum. Now it is an older version 6 on an old desktop, and I don't know if that has anything to do with.

Snails will make a TON of waste, and shrimp need good water quality. A 2g won't be sufficient. If you want to breed snails in a 2g, you probably shouldn't have anything else in it. Besides, it's hard to keep such a small amount of water heated stably, and stable temperature is really important for fish and shrimp.

PP: Oh, okay! I just didn't want to be redundant and make people answer the same questions all the time.

LGP: That makes sense! Will just the snails be okay in the 2g?

Right now I'm working on breeding ramshorn snails in my fluval edge (i know, kind of a waste of such a pretty tank) Im just using the stock fluval filter/heater/lights and they are doing ok. I've had them going in there for a few weeks now and alternate between getting new snails from the pet shop, and feeding them to my puffer, but I have a few adults that I'm not going to get rid of for breeding purposes and in the last couple days I just spotted 3 or 4 clutches of eggs. so far so good, I'm hoping I can raise a stable population to feed my gsp. Unfortunately I have gravel in the tank, and I'm scared to vacuum it because I don't want to suck up any baby snails I might have developing.

kcartwright856 wrote:LGP: That makes sense! Will just the snails be okay in the 2g?

Snails can handle anything, even not-so-great water quality. They're just-add-food critters. As long as you keep up with the water changes, I don't think there'll be a problem.