Snail safe fish

[Something Fishy Here]

Hello friends, I've recently become fascinated with snails. I've got a few mystery and nerites in my tank with a couple juvie chocolate cichlids and they ignore them completely. I know as with aggression and territorial issues, a lot can change from specific fish to fish temperament, and one day they might just realize that there are yummy snacks crawling around them. But it got me curious as to what other fish are snail safe, or relatively so.

I have a friend who keeps some with a single frontosa with no issue. Another friend said he was putting some in his severum tank, but i haven't heard the results from that trial yet. Another friend keeps a couple nerites in her betta tank.

Plenty of threads on getting rid of snails, but can't find much on people's experience with keeping them successfully with fish. So what fish have you kept snails with, and what types of snails were they?

 

[Deadeye]

Maybe not the best answer, but I have plenty of success with guppies and snails (trumpet, ramshorn, pond). Any really small fish (excluding puffers and loaches) shouldn’t bother them.
I didn’t think my red wolf would eat them, but even he eats adults.

 

[Ansorgii]

Most surface dwelling fish will ignore snails aswell, so if you want sth. Bigger Arowana and Toxotes might be a suggestion. Same goes for most predators.

I also can't think of any tetra that eats snails besides Myleus, they just eat everything they figure out is edible.

Heros destroy snails, at least mine always did, would be suprised if your friend has different results.

 

[Something Fishy Here]

Thanks, I'm actually not really looking to add more fish to my tank, if i did they'd be peaceful and small, but thought this was a topic that deserved a little discussion as i couldn't find much else on it beyond tetras, danios, guppies, and the like.

I'll have to reach out to my friend and see if he ever got some snails for that tank. I had a couple severums once that ate a dozen neon tetras, different shape than snails but still opportunistic feeders, so I'm not surprised they'd find them and eat them.

 

[jjohnwm]

I think it would be a lot easier to simply make up a list of fish species that do eat snails, since the vast majority don't, unless of course the snail is crushed in which case a free-for-all ensues. I like snails myself, both as interesting inhabitants of my tanks and also as food supplements for my turtle and fish.

I occasionally see a snail making its way across the skin of my Jelly Cat; seems not to bother him, and he never eats a snail on purpose, in fact if one is slurped up along with his mouthful of Massivores he typically goes to great lengths to spit it back out without losing any of the pellets.

 

[Something Fishy Here]

Maybe your belly cat doesn't like them going out the other way.

With pond snails or trumpet snails id be far less concerned because they breed and repopulate, but with nerites and mystery snails, and others that don't breed in the tank is a little more frustrating to see them chomped.

 

[Something Fishy Here]

So far so good with my chocolate...

 

[FJB]

Few fish will eat the nerites. Relatively few fish will eat adult mystery snails, but some will play with them to death (some SAmerican cichlids), and some will eat them (some Africans). Small (juvenile) snails can be a different story.
Regarding small snails (malaysian trumpet, pod snails, ramshorns, etc.) quite a few fish will eat them, most notably "Botia"-type loaches (clowns, blue, yo-yos).

 

[Something Fishy Here]

Thanks for the info, i was a little more concerned they'd pick at then out of boredom or curiosity than target them as prey. I've read accounts of severums living peacefully with them for awhile then eating one almost out of happenstance or curiosity, then realizing there's food just crawling around the tank and picking off the rest. But those may have been isolated incidents.