# Golden Apple Snails - bioload?



## fishcurl (Jul 14, 2011)

I have an opportunity to pick some of these snails up for free, but I'm curious to know what sort of bioload they produce. In other words, are they messy?

Thanks in advance!


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## Foisair (Aug 3, 2011)

I have a snail in my 2 gal with Beast and am finding he makes quite the mess. It could just be more obvious with my substrate though. (marbles like in my avvy.) It doesn't seem to make my ammonia levels rise or anything, it just looks dirty.

I have decided to rehome him to a coworker who loves him to pieces.


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## LittleBettas (Jul 23, 2011)

Snails have a high bioload.... I think the min. tank rec. for them is 5 gallon... but I would say 10 gals just to be safe.
For smaller tanks, consider shrimp, either ghost or cherry, they are extremelly entertaining, live 1-3 years, have almost 0 bioload, and help clean the tank up, not to mention ghost shrimp are 33 cents at walmart, lol


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## GreenTea (Jan 31, 2011)

I have 3 snails in my goldfish tank and they love it! The high filtration keeps the water clean. I tried keeping them with my bettas and decided not to mostly for the snails sake.

Even the most docile of my bettas tried to rip off the antennae and eyes of the snails!


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## fishcurl (Jul 14, 2011)

Thanks everyone for your feedback!

It's sounding like they're not really for me if they're so messy. They look like they'd be a fun and interesting addition to a tank but not if it means cleaning up after them. I'd rather put my cleaning efforts into another betta tank 



LittleBettas said:


> For smaller tanks, consider shrimp, either ghost or cherry, they are extremelly entertaining, live 1-3 years, have almost 0 bioload, and help clean the tank up, not to mention ghost shrimp are 33 cents at walmart, lol


The ghost shrimp sound really neat - I didn't know they had 0 bioload. What do they eat?



GreenTea said:


> Even the most docile of my bettas tried to rip off the antennae and eyes of the snails!


:shock: 

And there'd be the other reason why snails wouldn't be a good choice for me :lol:


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## GreenTea (Jan 31, 2011)

I have 4 apple snails with 6 platys and a big common goldfish and I love to watch that tank with all the colors! The high filtration helps keep it clean and I do a 25% percent change every week.


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## HatsuneMiku (Jul 29, 2011)

how can you tell when the apple snail dies? .. my bf got one and put it in his 10g planted tank .. and it was fine and moving around for like a few days .. then it went in it's shell and hasn't moved at all since .. it's been like that for 2 weeks


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## dragonflie (Aug 5, 2011)

Mistress said:


> how can you tell when the apple snail dies? .. my bf got one and put it in his 10g planted tank .. and it was fine and moving around for like a few days .. then it went in it's shell and hasn't moved at all since .. it's been like that for 2 weeks


Sometimes snails will spend a fair amount of time hiding in their shell.

Two major ways to tell if it's still alive. If it's in the shell, the operculum should be tightly closed. Or if it's not, and there's a teeny bit of snail peeking out, touch it lightly; he should react to that and probably pull the operculum closed the rest of the way. When a snail dies the muscle that operates the operculum relaxes so they tend to hang out of the shell a bit.

The other major way to tell is..unpleasant to say the least. Smell it. From what I've been told, dead snails have an unmistakable smell when they die. I couldn't tell ya what it smells like because when I lost my snail the rest of my fish turned him into escargot so there was nothing left.


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## HatsuneMiku (Jul 29, 2011)

oooooh .. maybe his apple snail will do better in my goldfish tank =D

also .. when it's in that hibernation state .. do they still have a bioload ?

and i read somewhere (i forgot where .. might have been wiki) that when they turn brown that's when they are dead?


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## GreenTea (Jan 31, 2011)

Yeah I had one that died while on vacay and I came back to an apartment smelling like...dead snail. There isn't a word for it. I've seen some bad stuff and I threw up for about 30 mins after cleaning and had to keep all the windows open for a day. 

Another way to tell is to put them in a tupperware container (with water obvi) and then give them part of an algae wafer. They'll get up and about for sure! Sometimes when they curl up like that it means they don't have any food. They poop the most when they're eating, I don't know if they produce ammonia when they're in their shell like that but I'd say if they're not eating the answer is basically no.


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## dbockrath (Jul 29, 2011)

I have 3 golden apple snails in a 10 gallon aquarium with my female betta and they poop a lot (to the point where I could see a lot of poop floating in the bucket the first time I did a water change after I got them). If I had it to do over again, I'd only have gotten 2. I was overfeeding too, though. I was giving them 2 algae wafers every night and I think 1 is plenty, broken into pieces so they don't have to crawl on top of each other to eat. 

Also, don't panic if you see one floating--they do float when they're dead, but some just enjoy floating. They let the air out of their shells somehow when they want to get back down.

I was surprised at how fascinating my snails are. I love watching them slither around (especially at night when they're much more active).


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## Foxell (Mar 13, 2011)

My two golden and blue mystery snails were a great addition to my tank, but they're not for everyone. They cleaned up algae really well, but when I feed them certian foods they do produce a lot of poo. Especially with lettuce. My ghost shrimp does a pretty good job at helping clean up after them. They're also really fun to watch! I love mine to bits, haha <3


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## dbockrath (Jul 29, 2011)

I noticed that with lettuce too. After I had the snails for a couple of weeks, the ammonia didn't seem elevated but the water was turning a nasty yellow color. I cut the algae wafers I gave them every night from 2 to 1 and stopped giving them lettuce. It seemed to clog the filter anyway.

I was really relieved my betta doesn't seem aggressive to them at all. She enjoys watching them, I think, but I've never seen her nipping at them. She did push them off the walls a few times the first couple of days. I'd really hesitate to put a male betta in with them though. If they outlive Peachy, I'd probably get another female betta.


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