Making food for mystery snails?

When I first started my tank I popped in 3 mystery snails, and while they've since passed away they have more than left their legacy. My last count was around 50 baby mysteries, the largest of them being maybe half an inch big. They're voracious eaters and for whatever reason love my big hygro, so I've been trying to keep them well fed and away from it. So far it seems to be working, but handfuls of algae/carnivore wafers every day isn't necessarily cheap, and fresh food comes in such big batches that they can't finish it before it goes bad, so I've been thinking of just making my own food. Anyone have experience with this? I've even heard of people making food out of duckweed, which I have tons of. (I just need them to get big and sturdy enough to where I'd feel comfortable shipping them out...)

 

buy shrimp pellets and drop them in.
actually any food will do. snails eat everything. feed more fish food than usual, or drop in algae wafers, sinking food pellets, or shrimp pellets. any aquarium food will do. turtle food etc

 

I have them them too and was glad to see your question. I scraped a clutch of eggs out of my AC HOB 2 days ago, put it on a damp towel in a plastic bowl with a lid. They sound like a lot of work and mess, wondering how this will go! I'm going to keep them in a 10 gallon tank. I saw a video and they really do eat a lot! Do you suction the substrate more often?

 

They'll also eat sliced zucchini, boiled for a few minutes so it will sink.

 

Yep, snails love vegetables. Mystery snails also need a source of protein though, so feed other things than just veggies. Zucchini is great, Cucumbers good, carrots are good, anything with lots of calcium. For a protein source you can feed meatier fish foods like shrimp pellets twice a week.

 

I have them them too and was glad to see your question. I scraped a clutch of eggs out of my AC HOB 2 days ago, put it on a damp towel in a plastic bowl with a lid. They sound like a lot of work and mess, wondering how this will go! I'm going to keep them in a 10 gallon tank. I saw a video and they really do eat a lot! Do you suction the substrate more often?

I just let them hatch straight off the wall in my 55 so I never had a chance to put them in a seperate tank, which in retrospect I regret a bit. The floor is planted so I don't have the option of cleaning the substrate, but when my pleco and khulis dig around in there they send up waves of dust. I'd definitely be vacuuming more if i could.

 

Think people kind of misunderstood what I was asking lol, I meant like I want to literally make my own food cubes/pellets/etc instead of buying anything at all.

 

Snello! Lots of recipes online. My favorite is ground up random fish foods, plain gelatin, crushed eggshells, babyfood. Corydoras and shrimp eat it too. Cut it up and freeze it-lasts forever!

 

I made snello, and yes, my inverts love it, but it gets weird in the water after a short while, so cut your cubes small to start.

I'm looking for other recipes that I can bake, I want sinking food.

 

Not going to lie, took me a second to realize snello wasn't a play on hello like snail-hello and was snail-jello :'D but thank you for telling me about it! And yeah I second mhamilton0911, would love some dry foods as well.

 

A quick google search "bake your own fish food" yielded some results.

The thing with commercial foods is they are tested. I would think a varied diet that balances commercial with frozen, a bit of live maybe and homemade would be great!

 

I feed my Nerites by slicing and skinning a piece of cucumber, then boil it and cool it.