# Of Mystery Snails (and Duckweed!!!!!)



## asukawashere (Mar 11, 2009)

So, today I made the most fascinating discovery in my fishroom: mystery snails eat duckweed!!!!

I have a habit of keeping one in each tank to help clean various algae, since they don't bother my plants or fish (unless the latter are breeding). This is mostly because a.) I have lots of tanks, and b.) I'm too lazy to bother cleaning diatoms and such off the glass most of the time. As such, if the snail doesn't take care of it, well, so much for being able to see my fish 

Anyway, I was doing a bunch of last-minute water changes before hurricane Irene hits us, and I'm sitting there siphoning out a 37 gal when its resident purple cleanup crew starts cruising along the edge of the water. And then I look closer, and he's using his foot to collect duckweed into a little funnel, and then sucking it down whole, one piece at a time.

I never knew they did that - always heard that mystery/briggs snails were the one species of apple snail whose sale/transport wasn't regulated because they don't hurt plants. Guess that doesn't apply to bite-size species! (This one doesn't, after all, touch even the delicate-leaved Nymphaea stellata plants in his tank.)

Anyone else ever notice this, or do I just have a rather particularly creative snail?


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## TarantulaGuy (Apr 15, 2009)

Keep us informed! I have a 10 gal that i scoop out giant netfulls of duckweed once a week, I wouldn't expect the mystery snails to clear up the problem, but would be neat if I could introduce one or 2 and have a viable food source right there for them that would never run out.


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## firefiend (Aug 17, 2009)

I just painstakingly removed duckweed from my 10 gallon when I did a rescape! If only I'd know, lol.


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## CL0NE1 (Jul 27, 2011)

you know....aquatic turtles love duckweed. they eat it, hide under it, make a mess with it. So if you know someone with an aquatic turtle, give it to them or acquire one yourself if ur interested


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## TarantulaGuy (Apr 15, 2009)

I didn't even think about aquatic turtles.....duhhh, lol. My girlfriends mom has a giant red eared slider that I'll feed some duckweed to if it wants it. I have no desire to get one tho, messy creatures!


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

Now if you could get mystery snails to eat planaria, I would buy a dozen!


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## CL0NE1 (Jul 27, 2011)

If you could get them to eat cyanobacteria...they would be worth their weight in gold...


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## asukawashere (Mar 11, 2009)

Michael said:


> Now if you could get mystery snails to eat planaria, I would buy a dozen!


Don't spixi snails do that? They've got a hefty appetite for pesky inverts AFAIK. Hydra, planaria, limpets, baby snails...



CL0NE1 said:


> If you could get them to eat cyanobacteria...they would be worth their weight in gold...


Actually, they do!  I had a massive CB outbreak in one of my 10g tanks earlier this summer. I chucked a dozen mystery snails in there and all the blue-green slime was gone overnight. By the end of the week I transferred most of the snails to other tanks, left one behind on janitorial duty, and haven't seen a blue-green speck in the tank since. 

In other news, I've now observed this duckweed-munching behavior in 3 different tanks' snails. I think it's safe to conclude that they eat the stuff!

I certainly wouldn't leave it to them to singlehandedly eliminate the stuff from a tank, but if you want something to just control its proliferation, you might want to try a mystery snail in your own tank


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## TarantulaGuy (Apr 15, 2009)

You've convinced me, I'm going to pick up a mystery snail or 2 for my 10 gal. Plenty of duckweed, and I get some cyano that grows on an exposed piece of moss/driftwood that sticks up out of the tank when it gets a little dry. They'll love it.


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## CL0NE1 (Jul 27, 2011)

wish I knew that before I spent $15 on cyano treatment...luckily it worked( I bought a miramo moss ball that had cyano on it and it infected my 55 gallon planted tank)


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

What type of snail did we find in the pond? Do those eat duckweed also? I didn't see any duckweed on the surface of that pond at all.


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## asukawashere (Mar 11, 2009)

Those were trapdoor snails (Viviparus georgianus). They're good algae eaters, but I'm not sure what they do to duckweed. Maybe worth an experiment. I'll plop one in a tank and see what happens.

That said, I suspect that pond lacked duckweed because it had ducks. Or rather, geese - there are a ton of Canada geese that live in the area; they probably drift up and down the waterways and destroy any plants in sight.


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