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Apple Snails and Plants
> I was so happy with my first Apple Snail that I started looking for a
> mate or at least another nice looking snail. Finally found one that
> was acceptable and brought him home. <snip>
> Several of the plants are missing! I discovered last night that the
> new apple snail is eating everything in sight, including amazon sword
> leaves. <snip>
Early on after hearing people rave about the algae controlling abilities of
these snails, I went out and bought a large (4 cm) apple snail. Before long,
I began waking up in the mornings to find large quantities of plants floating
on the surface. They had been chewed off from the base. First it wiped out a
nice stand of Vallesneria I had going, then started in on everything else.
After gorging itself for a few weeks, it would bury itself in the gravel for
awhile, then resume its mayhem. I traded it in for one of those big, yellow
"Golden" snails. That one chewed off the plants just as zealously.
My conclusion is only the small young snails of these types may be useful. I
provided the snails with additional food of various kinds, but they seem to
prefer slithering along, chewing whatever plants are in their path.
I've had the common pond snails which reproduced wildly until I got some
Botias. They never seem to get very large, just large in numbers. Never
seemed to harm the plants from what I could tell.
I've got a colony of the burrowing Malaysian Trumpet Snails that are able to
evade the Botia striatas I have now, and I'm happy with them. My $.02.
Kent
In ever sunnier Sacramento