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re: Japanese Trap Door Snail

>From: williaro at ftmcphsn-emh1_army.mil (Williams, Rochelle - DCSPIM)
>
>In an attempt to control algae, I recently purchased a snail for my Discus 
>community tank, pH ~6.8, Temp 84F.  The fish store said it was not an Apple 
>nor Ram snail, but believed it was a Japanese Trap Door snail.  It has a 
>slightly cone shaped dark shell (nothing like a Maylasian snail but slightly 
>protrudes on one side of the spiral) with slightly darker multiple stripes 
>that follow the spiral of the shell.  According to the Krib Web Page, 
>Mystery (Apple) snails were the best algae eaters of the ones they 
>mentioned.  The Ram snail being a voracious plant eater and not to get that 
>one.  Does anyone have experience with the Japanese Trap Door snail?

Your description of a Japanese Trap Door snail sounds just like my description
of an Apple snail.  If your snails are from the Ampullaria genus (escargot), I
find them to be somewhat effective at consuming red algaes.

The information you read on the ramshorn snail doesn't concur with my
experience, but I may have a different variety of ramshorn snail.  The red
ramshorns that I have (along with my apple snails) will eat algae and soft
plant matter.  If the plants get mushy, they are snail-dinner.  Otherwise, the
snails will clean them but don't seem to do much damage.

I have found my snails to be virile in the following order:  

Red ramshorns are the hardiest.
Pond snails are in the middle (they eat plants, too).
Apple snails are less hardy (but the most valuable, IMO).

I've had all three snails in the same tank together, and the young apple snails
started dying off first (I then moved the rest of them).  After the apple
snails were gone, the pond snails started to deteriorate over the space of a
few months.  By the time the pond snails were all gone, I still had red
ramshorns (although not many).  The tank was an infusoria tank with 24x7
lighting and no plants.  A hard algae grew on the bottom and the water was
opaque green.  I used the tank to breed ghost shrimp.

These are the only snails I have experience with.

David W. Webb
Enterprise Computing Provisioning
Texas Instruments Inc. Dallas, TX USA
(214) 575-3443 (voice)  MSGID:       DAWB
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