not the best luck with snails... other than pest snails, I can grow bumper crops of those...

[Magnum Man]

I've not tried Nerite snails yet, but had some Gold Inca snails & Mystery snails, & tried a few Assassin snails... I still have at least one of each lot I've bought over the last year or so, but have always bought them in groups of 4 or so... I really don't like having dead snails in my tanks for what they do to the water, & ya can't really tell if they are dead very easy, sometimes the float, sometimes not, sometimes they go dormant for a a while... so I'm thinking I may be best with only one snail ( of the non pest variety ) per tank, so I can better keep an eye on them... I doubt 1 dead snail would throw my water in to chaos, but 4 or 5 dead ones may...

has anyone else had issues with keeping their snails alive??? I bought a lot of 4 ( Mystery snail assortment ), after most of my water was changed over ( previous water conditions )... I think I have one, maybe 2 left, so fixing my water, hasn't increased my snail survival rate...

I'm actually enjoying quite a bit, watching the larger snails "race" around the tank... this one is near golf ball sized

 

[WhistlingBadger]

That's a cool looking mystery snail. For reasons I don't understand, I have never been able to keep mystery snails alive for more than a year or two. I have the same problem with shrimp (except amanos, which seem bulletproof), so I suspect some mineral is lacking in my water. Nerites are nice, though they leave little white egg specks all over the place which drove me nuts. But they never lasted longer than a year, either.

I enjoy "pest snails," especially ramshorns, and they seem to last longer. They're certainly cheaper!

 

[Magnum Man]

took me a while to get a picture of it "smiling"

yes snails have teeth ( or maybe beaks is more correct??? )

pest snails may not be lasting longer than that, there is just too many to tell???

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Yeah, they probably don't live that long individually, but they tend to form enduring populations for me. None of the more popular snails do that. The last time I kept mystery snails, they spawned like crazy the first few months, then gradually died out.

 

[10 Tanks]

Hello. Have always had good luck with Ramshorn and Nerites. Like the Ramshorn. They can live a long time and can get pretty large. I like to get my tank water a little brackish for the Nerites to see if they'll breed. I also liked a little salt in the fish tanks in the beginning to give me a little wiggle room if I had to delay the large water change for whatever reason. A little aquarium salt in the water helped the fish deal with a slightly higher level of nitrogen in the water. Of course the large, weekly water changes are no problem after so many years, provided you have the right system. But, I kept up the addition of a little salt just in case. Now, we'll see if the Nerites will reproduce. I always tinker with the tanks a little to see if I can learn something more.

10 Tanks (Now 11)

 

[Banafish]

Mystery snails have an average lifespan of 1 year even in good conditions, so having one that lives up to 2 years is really good!

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Mystery snails have an average lifespan of 1 year even in good conditions, so having one that lives up to 2 years is really good!

Well, maybe that explains my problem! ha ha

 

[Ram419]

I've had a few mystery snails die on my not long after purchase. And, if there isn't enough material in the tank for them to eat you really have to feed them. But, I've had one mystery snail that is almost 14 months old now, it was a small baby when I got it. So, it might not have that much longer. I had another mystery snail, in the same tank, that was bigger then the baby one I have when I purchased it, recently die so I figure it was about a year old.

The one in the pic is pretty big so might be a bit old now. They are pretty small when babies.

I've never had them breed though. I don't think I've had two of separate sexes in the tank.