Caring for aquatic snails
Here at Snails UK, we keep our aquatic 'herds' in 'snail only' aquaria. This encourages activity and allows for individual personalities to blossom. Some species are more active than others, and keeping one of the bigger species of ampullarids is probably the closest a freshwater aquarist can come to keeping an octopus or stepping back 70 million years and finding a living ammonite.
Keeping any of our snails properly requires that they be kept in an aquarium with hard, heated and filtered water, provided with suitable foods and spared from unsuitable tank-mates.
The internet is full of guides to setting up and maintaining a successful home aquarium and we don’t see much point in trying to develop another one. There are, however, a few snail specific issues that do warrant acknowledgement:
Hard and alkaline water
Snails need calcium to make their shells, and take this from the water in which they live as well as from the food that they eat. Water that carries a high mineral content, usually including a high calcium ion content, is described as 'hard'. Tap water across much of the UK can be described as hard, but even if yours isn’t you can make it harder quite easily. Using coral gravel, crushed coral sand or calcium rich rocks like chalk can help because they will leach useful mineral matter into the water. You can also buy aquarium water hardeners if you know your water is naturally rather devoid of mineral content. Hard water and a coral or chalk substrate will also protect your water from increasing acidity and so, in turn, protect your snails’ shells from the unsightly acid erosion that can damage them. Ampullarids should be kept in slightly alkaline water. Again, you can purchase water additives to raise the pH of your water if really necessary.
Heated water
All of our snails are essentially tropical species, and need a temperature of 22-26 Celsius to be hungry, happy and active.
Filtered water
Much like the rest of us, aquatic snails eat and defecate. Unlike us, however, aquatic snails are somewhat cursed to live in a soup of their own faeces and uneaten food. As your snails' carer, you have a responsibility to make sure that this 'soup' is as dilute as possible, by undertaking regular water changes and by running a filtration system within your aquarium. This is standard, and snails have the same demands in this regard as aquarium fish. An additional point to note, however, is that snails, with their soft bodies and long tentacles, should always be protected from the filter intake by sponge barrier.
Suitable food
The best and easiest staple foods for snails are sinking fish food pellets, and this diet can be augmented with fresh vegetables. Sweetcorn seems to be a favourite food for most snails, and won’t foul the water like cabbage and some other vegetables will.
Headroom
Ampullarids (Apple Snails and Giant Ramshorns) have a lung and like to use it. Most species like to leave the water from time to time and should be allowed room above the water-line to do this, even if just on the aquarium glass and hood. Species that lay their eggs above the water (Applesnails) need this space if they are to reproduce successfully. As all this might suggest, snails, and ampullarids in particular, will quickly escape your aquarium if you have any snail sized spaces or holes in your hood.
Live plants
Snails and live plants don’t really mix. There are exceptions, like our blue apple snails (Pomacea diffusa), but our Giant Colombian Ramshorns (Marisa cornuarietis) really will eat pretty much anything.
Fish
Most people with an aquarium want fish in it. Unfortunately, fish and snails aren’t always compatible within the confined space of a home aquarium.
If you must have fish, then chose snails that have short or stubby tentacles like Chinese Trapdoor Snails, Rabbit Snails or Assassin Snails.
In our experience, the only fish that don’t bother the long flowing tentacles of ampullarids are those small species that stay in open water and never stay still long enough to peck at anything on the aquarium glass or substrate. Good examples would be danios and white cloud mountain minnows.
Perhaps surprisingly, size is not a good indicator of compatibility. Guppies and platies must be some of the most persistent snail harassers we’ve ever seen, and are quite capable of really ruining things for even the biggest apple snail.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that, like many aquatic invertebrates, aquatic snails are extremely sensitive to copper. Quite a few of the commoner aquarium fish medications contain copper in concentrations that will kill your snails very quickly indeed.