The next thing you want to do is spread slices of cucumber around the bottom of your tank. After you turn out the lights. Wait until the snails come up to feed on it, and then remove the cucumber along with the snails. Repeat this as often as you have snails coming up. It claims to be safe for shrimp, but I would avoid using it if you intend to keep other varieties of snail in your aquarium. It will continue to kill snails for quite a while after use. Even a lot of fish that would normally prey on snails, like larger species of puffer and cichlids , will leave trumpet snails alone.
Trumpet snails may damage the teeth of larger puffers, so best to avoid those. If you are concerned about parasites, ParaGuard is a good product to deal with them that is safe for snails. Be very careful when using plant fertilizers and medications as some of the ingredients may be harmful to Trumpet Snails. Most importantly, avoid copper, because even in small amounts, copper can be fatal. Malaysian Trumpet Snails are ferocious eaters spending most of the day under the substrate.
They dig through substrate in search of edible matter that has accumulated on the tank bottom. When the tank lights go off, Trumpets can be seen moving up from the substrate to scour other hard surfaces for food.
The next day, the snails burrow back into the substrate to spend lighted hours buried and out of site. While digging, their long mouth appears, extending well beyond their shells resembling an elephant trunk.
Food Sources: Malaysian Trumpet Snails like left-overs including uneaten fish food, fish flakes, bottom feeder tablets, pellets, and algae wafers. They also enjoy all sorts of debris, detritus and soft algae growing on hard surfaces. Malaysian Trumpet Snails enjoy tanks with lots of live plants. The live plants continuously shed edible material adding to the snails natural diet. Malaysian Trumpet Snails do not seem interested in eating live plants, just the debris.
Reproduction: Malaysian Trumpet Snails reproduce very quickly and in large numbers, especially if food is abundant. Other things being equal, the more food there is, the more Malaysian Trumpet Snails will reproduce.
One of the ways hobbyists control Malaysian Trumpet Snail populations is to limit food levels long term. Malaysian Trumpet Snails are peaceful and should be in tanks with other non-aggressive tank mates. Some people may find killing them a very undesirable method of control. When several are present, expect a colony to pop up almost overnight. They breed through two methods: sexual reproduction or parthenogenesis. Sexual reproduction is the rarer of the two, where male sperm fertilizes a female egg.
This can result in the female producing over babies. They develop in brood pouches before releasing as developed juveniles. Parthenogenesis, or virgin birth, means a female can produce a whole colony by giving birth to female clones. They often sneak into aquariums because of eggs hiding in plants, substrates, and other items purchased at the aquarium store.
In this way, they are bad. Some people avoid having these snails at all costs and yet others love keeping them as pets. Cut things back and the snail numbers will follow suit. For the impatient, you can put a large piece of lettuce in the aquarium at night to snag large numbers of snails at a time, speeding up the process. Should you want a more gladiator-type approach, there are fish that relish the chance at eating snails.
With all those whorls, these are actually not the easiest snails to eat, even for snail specialists. Fish as ravenous as African cichlids actually leave the snails alone for the most part. But some fish are very good at crushing, shucking, and biting right through even snails like this. Certain species of loaches are famous snail eaters. Clown, skunk, and yoyo loaches all are employed for this cause, and there is long list of other loach species that will do the job as well.
With a quick twitch, these snail assassins rip the snail right out of the shell. Also, clown loaches and probably others are known to enjoy eating snail eggs. Therefore, if you have non-livebearing snails, these will be eliminated even faster!
The downside of this is aggression to your other fishes. The subocular spines of loaches are wicked weapons, and many species squabble with each other and with other fishes. A more simple and brutal approach is to crush the snail. With hard-bodied prey being abundant all over the Earth, there are also fish with snail-crushing jaws everywhere. Many cichlids can develop the skill for ripping snails out in loach-like fashion. Species as different as yellow labs Labidochromis caeruleus and Haitian cichlids Nandopsis haitiensis do this.
There are, however, snail-eating cichlid specialists that have jaws custom-made for crushing snails. The buffalo cichlid Steatocranus casuarius and the endangered Herichthys minckleyi have powerful pharyngeal jaws specially made to crush snails.
Other cichlids have these jaws too, but there is an arms race between sturdy snail shells and powerful snail-crushing jaws. The easy solution to this is to have a large fish for the job. Pharyngeal jaws are great tools for eating snails, but what might be even better is a beak! Puffers tear apart snail shells the way large parrots tear apart hard seeds. Except for large snails and small puffers, this matchup is almost always in favor of a fat and happy pufferfish.
Like the snail-eating loaches, puffers not only eat snails, they do so con gusto! Again, as with both the cichlids and the loaches, there are aggression issues to be considered. Some puffers are downright insane and appallingly persistent with their dispatching of tankmates.
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