Hello again friends! Can you tell I am very into setting up my aquarium lately? 😃 It is almost cycled - crossed fingers! - so hopefully I can bring home my fish and snail friends soon.
My plan is for one or two Nerite snails in the tank, so today I thought I would talk a little bit about what I've learned about making a happy home for snails!
A lot of people think you can just let the snails eat the algae in the tank and not feed them, but that isn't true. Generally you are not going to have enough food for them that way, and they'll starve! They are very good at scavenging around, and depending on the type of snail you have they may eat algae, leftover fish food, rotting plants, etc. and do a really good job of cleaning up a lot of the stuff in your fish tank, but if you think about it, if your tank looks clean ... then they don't have any food in there, do they?
So that's why there are algae wafers to feed your snails! You can also feed them certain vegetables (I think you are supposed to blanch them first), and there is a thing called "snello" that I haven't made yet since of course I don't have my snails yet, but it's healthy snail food you make with gelatin at home, ergo the name, snail + jello = snello. 😄
Now I've heard some people say they put in empty shells for this, and I think some people even said they used eggshells (I assume ground into powder so they're not sharp?), but it's important to have some source of calcium in your tank so your snails' shells can stay strong. Wonder Shell is a calcium supplement for this purpose. There are different sizes, so I got the little ones since I have a small tank. Snails who don't get enough calcium can have their shells become soft and deformed, which is dangerous for them. This is why a lot of the snello recipes have a calcium supplement as one of the ingredients, and one even said if you had a Wonder Shell in your tank to use less calcium in your snello.
One last important point for snail safety: a good lid! They can be little escape artists, get out of the tank, and die out there without water. So you want to make sure your lid is secure for your little snail friends. I am now going to have to make my third attempt at a lid, lol, as my previous attempts had different issues. I need to custom make my lid so that plants that need to stick out of the water can do so (store bought lids don't accommodate that).
I hope this helps you take care of your snail friends. I like sharing what I am learning and learning from each other, so please share any snail tips you know in the comments! 😄