How Soon Can You Add Snails?

[PlasticGalaxy]

My nerites do VERY well in the sand. Their poo is a lot easier to clean up in the sand as well. I have nerites in freshwater with gravel, freshwater with sand, and brackish with sand. They absolutely thrive.

Fantastic, thank you for the help!

 

[TMAllen]

Currently leaving my 54L tank project aside until the plants begin to grow and I can get all of the equipment sorted, but in the mean time, I've got a question: how soon into starting up a tank can you put snails in? I've got a good amount of MTS in my 170L, and was wondering if (once I can get the lid) I'd be able to put them in right away?
Saw three of them this morning. I love snails so much, can't believe they're so universally hated haha.
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So snails are a thing now. I've been seeing this for the past year on other fish forums. I have to say, I didn't add snails to my very first tank until the algae got to be too much for the asian stone (miniature) catfish and Plecostomus. Then, I got 'snails.' I never knew the breed - we got them in exchange for a tiger barb who didn't seem to like the community in the tank. If I remember right, we got a little baggy with, like 5 of these tiny little mollusks. And, again, I don't remember how long it took, but I think it might have been a month, the tank was overridden with these little snails. Eventually, I put a few leaves of lettuce down on the substrate and hung a few, low, with paper clips, along the sides of the tank to attract whatever I could. We got rid of these things, but it took several of these lettuce maneuvers. In answer to your question, as soon as you have a tank with any algae at all, it's ready for snails. But, they might need some natural barriers/predators to keep their population manageable. There might be snail breeds that require something special, but these tiny little periwinkle things that I had only needed algae.