The Puffer Forum

I have been trying to breed ramshorn snails twice already and im having major problems. they lay eggs but after that i am lost. idk if the babies are still alive or what i mean the snails i started out with will definetly grow but after say 1-2 months i feed them to my puffer and still i see no bigger snails from the babies that hatched. not sure what i am doing wrong im sure the water is just fine.

here is my setup that i am looking to start new.

Tank: 10gal
Air pump only no filter ( can't afford a filter for this tank so i will be doing water changes weekly around 20% at least )
snails: ramshorn i start out with at least 5-7 and they do breed and lay eggs and lots of them.

not sure what is going wrong is this natural or am i doing something wrong? i tend to feed vegetables such as lettuce and carrots and sometimes fish flakes. i assume it's what i am feeding them. I have an outdoor pot with some water lilies and snails where i get mine and they grow fine because theirs lots of algae growing in these pots. but i can't rely on these pots to grow the snails they don't seem to be reliable for breeding them at least not the amount i need. any suggestions? PS: i don't have money to buy algae wafers thus why i am using vegetables to feed my snails.

I actually had a problem breeding snails for my pea puffer when I fed them veggies/algae wafers. Luckily dp's don't depend on snails to keep their beaks down so it wasn't a problem for me. I actually had a ten gallon that unintentionally became a snail jail for a friend of mine who kept puffers. The difference between the intentional snail jail and the unintentional one was the successful one was filled with plants, had a heater, and had plenty of light. 5-7 snails would also take a decent amount of time to reproduce just due to the small numbers. If I were you I'd attempt to get some free snails from petsmart/petco(obviously have to quarantine) throw some plants in the snail jail if you don't have some already in there, and let them build up a decent population first. When I started my intentional snail jail I think I got over 30 snails from petsmart in one trip.

the aquarium shops here actually don't sell snails if they do it's only apple snails. we got our ramshorn snails from a pond store and thats WAY out of the way about a 2 hour drive. tried finding someone who sells them or would let me have a lot for free but no luck someone wanted to sell me 100 for around $10 what a rip off. Yea i think heat is a factor or seems to be one i mean the pot outside is in sunlight partially for the day and it seems to be breeding lots of snails easily. but not enough i no longer have plants but i think i will try a new set up. using the 10gal tank, use my old aquarium sand ( just because it's not being used and im going to end up throwing it away via composting ), and maybe put in some plastic gardening pots and use the sand to keep them in place and sunken. maybe this will give the snails something to lay their eggs on like the plants would and maybe hide in and i could add the food in the pots too. i probably should start with more and probably will. maybe i will start with 15-30 i will have to find them though majority of them are actually small i feed the big ones to my puffer already and im running out fast

Snail tanks need excellent housekeeping done to be successful, without a filter I would change out 20% of the water daily. The resulting masses of snails are worth it

+1 To bertie's advice - You are what you eat. If the snail breeder tank is not as clean as the tank or better, it will not work well, or at all. A snail breeding tank is another tank, same care and cleanliness standards as any other tank.

okay i will change 20% daily at least then. they usually don't poop a lot on a daily basis ( compared to a week collection ) so i assume it would be okay to not change daily. is it also okay to grind up egg shells into a powder and add to the water for calcium? i see people adding cuttlebone but i don't have any cuttlebone lying around and i know eggshells people put in snail tanks for calcium as well. the egg will have be dried of course and just crushed via a blender.

I have rarely added such, but I may just be lucky. Good water quality and suitable feeding of high quality foods have worked for me for years.

yes i highly assume it is the food because well i mean they don't eat vegetables in the wild. we have some hair algae growing outside in barrels full of rain water i might try some of that and keep up with the water changes usually i slack off and they end up dying like the 1st time 2nd time i think i didn't feed them and they just all died off.

I tend to use cuttlebone myself, but I got a lifetime supply when a niece was in Peace Corps on the west coast of Africa and collected baskets full on the beach.

feeding them spinach has always been the key for my snails, throw in a few leaves every few days and you should get a population explosion. Also you can order snails for cheap off of ebay I have done it myself and the snails mostly make it then just quarantine its a good way to refresh the dna of your snails.

puffykid wrote:feeding them spinach has always been the key for my snails, throw in a few leaves every few days and you should get a population explosion. Also you can order snails for cheap off of ebay I have done it myself and the snails mostly make it then just quarantine its a good way to refresh the dna of your snails.

+1 Spinach is yummy snail food!

for food i often use roman lettuce and carrots. any other foods they like besides algae pellets? that way i can get a good population going as i doubt the lettuce is very nutritional

Tie a slice of zucchini to a rock.

i set up the tank today 10gal with my old aquarium sand and put those plastic pots which they actually seem to love. instead of slimbing on the walls like they usually did in my last 2 set ups that failed they are all climbing around the pots. I will try zuccini tomorrow today i fed them some blanched lettuce . I added a bunch of them to the set up like people suggested i would say at the least 20 of them. some small some big. i think i actually added 2 different species a couple look like they have a pointed shell like a trumpet snail but the point isn't that long it's like one of those shells people blow into like a horn.

In case you haven't seen this: library/feeding/basic-snail-breeding/