Catching Snails and Crabs for tanks

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
P

Pazzoman

Piranha
MFK Member
Apr 5, 2009
3,005
50
81
New York
Hey Everybody,

Just wanted to know could adding snails and crabs from native waters danger the water of the tank. I could easily catch a bunch of inverts when I go fishing, at one time I caught at least 100 snails that are just like nass but with a black shell and smaller.

Is it a bad idea?
 
The risk i see is that they might have diseases or something like that. Then they will give it to the entire tank,
 
Ok thanks I gotta look at thier tube if thier welks pretty sure thier not, as for disease....I didn't think about that.
 
I agree with koi9otherone, it can be a bit of a risk when it comes to wild snails. you can bring parasites in, or the snails could be predatory (like whelks) and snails are EXTREAMLY hard to ID, that link KellyFrancis provided barely scratches the surface when it comes to Whelks. There is around 144 verieties of whelk (by common name), and a rediculus number of other types of snails, and more then a few are either active predators, gennerally carnivorous, or omnivorous. http://www.gastropods.com/Taxon_pages/Common_Names.shtml It would be safer to raise your own, the best way to do this is find their "ideal conditions" (most snails/inverts do better in certain temps/salinities but can survive in others) then make a small system just for them and then let them do their own thing away from "predators" (aka fish lol) and sooner or later you will could have more snails then you can count.
 
Hey kev, good idea this is random but I notice lots and lots of what i think a baby turbo snails. On one 3x5 inch rock that i took out of my tank thier was about 10 just on that one rock that i prepared to use as a frag plug.

Do turbos breed in tanks?
 
In theory just about every snail should/can breed in a tank. Will they breed?.... maybe, maybe not... like I said, some of the "common" ones preffer different temps/salinities, so they may not breed in less then "ideal" conditions, but again they can breed... Yes, rather contradictory but its true... lol. The biggest problem with snails breeding in tanks, is predators, as any number of things will eat the babies if the can, so yes you may see hundreds of tiny little snails, but less then 20% will survive to a "good" size (a guess but usually most die/get eaten like with most inverts). Also any snail that has a pelagic stage (most that I know of) will have huge losses of "babies" due to the filters/filter feeders making them disapear before they can settle onto the bottom.

Kelly the biggest difference is mentioned on the site which is the Operculum (a trap door). THAT said... other verieties of snails have them other then whelks, but it is the major distinguishing factor between whelks and the very similar Nassarius snails.
 
I guess for snails and crabs I will not placed in my tank, except for some of the crabs that have been in my sump for the past few months lol. I want to try to set up a native fish tank soon with fish that I catch in new york. That would be truly amazing, however majority of the marine fish in new york get rather large.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom