The Puffer Forum

Hey guys my account on here was fish 4 life but for some reason it wont let me change the password because i forgot my old one Anyways i have had my F8 for a week and was wondering were to buy snails? He is only 1 inch long so he needs really tiny snails and my lfs does not have any small enough.. So what can i feed that is crunchy?? Right now he is eating bloodworms, shrimp, and claims..

Where do you live because most places should have snails. I was having a shortage with getting them in my area in Maryland so i started a breeder tank for them which might be your best bet. You could check on Aquabid.com and get some and start a breeder thank that way but the clams should be good for now and the shrimp (just make sure they have to go through the tail to get the meat and that will should help.

Like Gooburz said, check aquabid.com and then start a breeding colony in a 10 gallon. If the snails you get are too large, just crush them up and toss it in the tank, the puffer will still eat it.

Plus 1 to Nuclear_Glitter's comments, with one addition. Snails are livestock. While they cannot transmit disease to the fish themselves, they do need to QT'd long enough to be sure any disease organism in their water have died off before they are fed to your fish. Ten days would be the absolute minimum, twice that would be better.

As always, RTR has pointed out something very important.

Is there anything wrong with starting a colony from "wild" snails?

QT'ing is obvious.

That being said there are different fish parasites that use snails as an intermediate host. Yellow grub for example. However even if your fish got yellow grub it shouldnt kill the fish and should go away on its own shortly - fish are not the final host of the parasite.