yeah i mean they suck, i got 3 adult snails a couple months ago but got rid of them and i still have a couple babies that pop up here and there but nothing to bad, i could understand not wanting to risk it but think about it, were you overfeeding or something when this happened? i guarantee there will only be the number of snails that there is food for, they overpopulate and run out of food then they die off from starvation so only number that can sustain from extra food in tank will thrive, its the same with algae if you dont have extra nutrients in your water or too much light then algae will not grow, as long as you keep everything clean then nothing should get out of hand but yeah as long as he doesnt eat the shrimp then they should work as clean up crew
Elephant trunk snake info
- Thread starter rudukai13
- Start date
Well keep in mind that I won't be doing water changes and won't be putting any kind of food in for the feeders. The snails/shrimp will have to survive solely on whatever algae is produced. This is gonna be about as close to a self-sustaining set up as I can get it, to reduce as much stress for the snake as possible.
ok but you do realize that no waterchanges will cause bad water quality and cause stress as well right, i know what that one guy said but i think he really just got lucky and the snake may survive but i doubt it it thriving (its like when my parents had my tank and didnt have a python siphon for wc, so they never did them, in a year the tank had like one waterchange with only the filter being cleaned out about once a month or two. the fish lived just fine and we had no casualties but they definitely werent thriving or growing as fast as they could have been), i would at least do waterchanges every 2-3 weeks, just set tank up with a sump so you can do the wc out of there and not mess with tank, high nitrates in water especially from his waste and the feeder fishes' waste will def stress his system
yeah they would just have to be smaller more often ones, but you wouldn't ever have to mess around in the tank at all
I think I might start out without one, going back to the "I can always do more" idea. If it seems to be working out - the snake has a very clear indicator of whether it's stressed or not - I can leave it alone. If it doesn't work though, then I can add a sump and start doing water changes that way. I will probably end up doing a water change every month or so anyway, just not weekly ones like with fish.
yeah that should be fine just make sure to keep close eye on water quality tests, but yeah GOOD LUCK when you finally decide to get this guy sounds like it would be one AWESOME snake to have
Thanks! We'll see how it goes, if I have good luck with my no-disturbances approach then hopefully it will encourage some others on here to try their hand at keeping one too. It could quickly go from extremely difficult to one of the easiest animals to keep!
totally agree usually animals that are "hard to keep" are just difficult because of our lack of knowledge of their needs/behavior, so the more people out there with successful personal experiences to share the better the knowledge out there will be for all of us 
Well I'm more than willing to try it out. I really hope I figure out something that works though. It'd be great if the first approach works, it would mean that a lot more people would be able to keep these, even those who have very little to no experience with aquatic animals/fish. Just set up the tank, throw a few feeders in every once in a while and leave it alone - how much easier could it get?
