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25-04-2003, 06:56 AM

tose (LeighMo) wrote in
:

Also, I have a large ramshorn snail I'd like to keep and
hundreds of MTS that I would really like to keep (I think the
population is healthy enough that It would be hard to get rid of them,
though.)

Not a Columbian ramshorn, is it? The ones that get to be 1" or
bigger? They are terrible plant-eaters.

I have no idea. Mine is almost 3" in diameter but appears to have
stopped growing. I've never seen it eat plants. How long do these
things live? Mine is starting to slow down and close his trap door lots.

1) Lots of ghost shrimp. Will these eat snail eggs?

They will eat snails. But not enough to control the population. They
can also be quite predatory with small fish.

2) Some kind of small loach. I'm having a hard time finding specific
references to non-clown loaches abilities to do this. How are kuhlie
loaches?

Kuhli loaches will eat snails. Loaches in general do a great job on
snails. Unfortuantely, they won't just eat the pond snails. They can
even kill snails much larger than themselves.

4) Any other ideas? I'm open to anything.

You could try trapping them. Bait them with a slice of zucchini or
lettuce leaf in a jar.

Or you could just live with the pond snails. If you don't mind
ramshorms and MTS, why not pond snails, too? IME, they don't do any
harm, and are terrific algae eaters.

Hmm, interesting. They are eating my plants quite a bit right now, but I
suspect that's because I've been neglecting some of the plants...I think
they are dead before the snails start to eat them.

Leigh

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