VertigoXLR8R222

i had this great idea to throw some snails in my tank so that they can breed and the smaller ones will be puffer food. no, this is not the case. i throw fifteen or twenty in there about once a week from an all snail tank i keep (i like snails). i never see any snails on the glass, no eggs, just empty shells. my question is: can i get really big snails to survive my dwarf puffer or should i just stick with throwing them in there randomly? and will the buildup of empty snail shells effect my water quality (there's alot)? any ideas Lee

sirdarksol

You will never find snails big enough to survive your puffer because puffers attack the soft parts. They will tear into a full-sized apple snail, methodically killing it.
You also want to make sure that you drop in snails that are small enough that the puffer can't avoid the shell. They need the crunchy part to file their beaks down, but they'll take the lazy way out if they can.

VertigoXLR8R222

wow thats interesting. i had not given any thought to their need for the shells. do you think i should try to get some eggs in the tank and let them hatch? my dwarf is so small that i don't think i can catch "small enough" snails for him to eat. and i think my mollies would eat the snail eggs before they had time to hatch. maybe a hang over the side breeding pen? let the snails hatch in it then they could just crawl out to my puffer's mouth? i would like to figure out how to protect some adult snails in my tank while allowing their babies to escape and become food. any ideas? Lee

griffin

the breeder pen is one idea. but assuming you're using pond snails, you should be fine as far as size. i tried to just give my puffer a variety of sizes, but never too much at once. those fish are little piggies! i'd also be careful about having mollies in a tank with a puffer.

there's also quite a bit of controversy over whether dwarf puffers really need to file down their beaks. some say it's needed, others say it's not. i'll leave the decision making up to you :P

hope that helped