The Puffer Forum

I just found out this species will eat MTS? Is this true? As MTS seem to be off the menu of most snail predators.

And how aggressive are they towards other fish, such as Zebra plecos and Cherry shrimp?

Thanks.

Irrubescos are pretty dang agressive in most cases. A pleco *might* be okay if it had plenty of hiding places and enough room to get away.

Red cherry shrimp would be an exciting hunt, and wouldn't last long at all. The irrubesco would thank you though!

MTS are generally not recommended to feed to any puffer, mainly because their shells are so hard, they can actually break the "teeth" of the puffer and cause all kinds of eating and dental problems in the future.

Hi.

Most puffers will attempt to eat MTS.
We recommend against offering these snails as food.
The reason is that the shell is to hard, which may cause damage to the teeth of the puffer.

Irrubescos can be anything from Mahatma Gandhi incarnate to Hannibal the Cannibal.
IOW, the level of aggression varies extremly.

A Zebra Pleco should be fine, all shrimps will (probably) be lunch.
How big is the tank?

I dunno about putting an $80 pleco in w/a puffer that could maim/kill it... at least till you were fairly sure of it's agressiveness.On the other hand, I'm sure my 12" goldspot pleco is worth a pretty penny & lives w/a 12" fahaka... He's way meaner than the fahaka though!

Woland sums these fish up nicely. I have had one that has 9 kills under its belt. Yet I have others that are too shy I never saw them.

Mine lives with otos in peace. It's a gentleman (or a coward). Larger ghost shrimps scare it. Slower shrimp like malayans are gone in a jiffy though. So I'd imagine cherries to be a real tasty treat.

I have my 3 irrubescos in the same tank with a common pleco, a very small adonis and a siamese algae eater.
They have never hurt the other fish and they look rather scared of the much larger common pleco.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I was just looking for something to cut down on the MTS numbers, it seems nothing eat's this snail!

Anyone know of something that does and is rather timid?

Thanks.

Green beans. Throw a green bean in the tank at might, in the morning, pull out the green bean covered in snails. Lather, rinse, repeat.

A lot of MTS snails is a good sign that you are over feeding. Snails can only reproduce to meet their food source.

Of course, there's nothing really bad about MTS snails, they keep the substrate churned up a bit and are quite pretty, IMO.

I'd actually like to get a hold of some MTS for my non-puffer planted tank to help churn the substrate a bit.

LOL Phaedrus, think I can get some over the border?

I have them in just about every tank in the house, could send you a bunch.

I'm sure they'd survive. I hear they're near industructable!

The problem is I am intentionally overfeeding to breed the Zebra plecos.

Well, then you're going to have the snails. Probably the best thing you can do is drop in some zuchanni or lettuce after lights out and pull it out of the tank a few hours later, it should be covered with the snals. But if you keep overfeeding, they'll just keep reproducing.

Ideally, you should overfeed your plecos, give them a half hour or so to eat, then do a huge gravel vaccuum and water change. The clean water will only encourage them to breed, and you'll be cleaning up the leftovers so there isn't much left for the snails. Or are you trying to feed actual baby plecos?