Eating Snails???

So I just rescaped Bruno's tank (he's my dumbo betta who flares a lot at snails) and while I was moving substrate I found an EMPTY horned nerite shell. Horned nerites are certainly small enough for him to eat, but could he have gotten it out of its shell?

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It could just be that the snail is dead. I also get that when I go once in awhile collecting the snails and putting them in a container. If you want to get rid of the snails get 1 assassin snail. They will lower the count but of course not right away since it has to eat the snails.

 

Maybe but nerites don't leave their shells and this one was moving just a day ago.

I do know about assassin snails, but these are nerites. They don't breed in freshwater at all so they're not overpopulated, and I pay too much money per snail to just kill them off! I want them in my tanks!

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It could just be that the snail is dead. I also get that when I go once in awhile collecting the snails and putting them in a container. If you want to get rid of the snails get 1 assassin snail. They will lower the count but of course not right away since it has to eat the snails.

The OP is not wanting to get rid of snails. These are not pest snails.

I would give the answer to the question a maybe. Mine has attempted to go after my nerites and the pest snails in my tank, but has always been stopped by their shells. I could believe that if the nerite fell off of something and ended up partially exposed, Bruno may have taken advantage of it. Or, if he was really cunning, maybe managed to intentionally knock the nerite off something and then go to town.

Alternately, the nerite could have died and he just took advantage of an easy meal.

 

I think those possibilities are pretty solid. There's nothing left in the shell at all so I hope he got a good meal out of it!

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