snail diet for young bichir?

[RLHam3]

hey so i just put my new 2" senegal into a 55 which has been runing for about a month and already has decent pond and ramshorn snail populations. Right now he/she's sharing the tank with 2 young bristlenose pleco's. My question is: would it hurt him at all to just eat snails that i squish against the glass for a while as long as he's getting enough? (and he'd also get blood worms and ghost shrimp every once and a while, as well as )

PS- i'm not trying to save money or anything and am planning on buying several different kinds of sinking foods, but i'm just curious and i had to ask

 

[gerryjun]

hey so i just put my new 2" senegal into a 55 which has been runing for about a month and already has decent pond and ramshorn snail populations. Right now he/she's sharing the tank with 2 young bristlenose pleco's. My question is: would it hurt him at all to just eat snails that i squish against the glass for a while as long as he's getting enough? (and he'd also get blood worms and ghost shrimp every once and a while, as well as )

PS- i'm not trying to save money or anything and am planning on buying several different kinds of sinking foods, but i'm just curious and i had to ask

are the shells soft or hard, they might be able break the shells on their own depending on how hard your particular type has.

snails will be good, i would suggest a minimum of 2-3 feeding per day for optimal growth, also try fish fillet cut in to bite size.

also try monitored your pleco, they tend to eat slime off bichirs that can be detrimental to your sen's, but this is usually when the bichirs are already big and ignores the pleco licking its back.

 

[mother monster]

i had a pleco in a tank with a bichir for 2 years and was lucky enough to have a passive pleco who never ate the slime off my bichir, likely because he was well fed, not sure... anyway the snails sound fine [awesome that he's eating them, never tried that with my bichir], especially as long as you're supplementing with other foods continuously. ghost shrimp, while i'm not sure of their nutritional value, was one of my bichir's faaavorite foods as a baby :> they eat practically anything apparently; hopefully the snails are nutritious!

 

[Spiritofthesoul]

I would say No. Snail shell isn't exactly bichir stomach friendly.

 

[gerryjun]

I would say No. Snail shell isn't exactly bichir stomach friendly.

they eat crabs in the wild, small snails have far less shell thickness, so its safe, i can crush mine with my little pinky

They can also eat small lobster and prawn complete with shells.

 

[Spiritofthesoul]

Yes it is possible, but not optimal.

Pellets are more nutritious and easy to digest than shells

 

[gerryjun]

Yes it is possible, but not optimal.

Pellets are more nutritious and easy to digest than shells

Not so sure about Pellets being more nutritious than natural food it self like whole snails (shell + meat heheheh).

Its like saying chicken nuggets are more nutritious than unprocessed chicken legs.

but if only shells vs pellets, its pellets hands down, but who would feed shells only to bichirs hehhehe.

 

[mother monster]

i would agree that it's not probably good for them to swallow shells, I was imagining you may possibly smashing them and sort of escargot-style forcing the snail out- snails tend to fall out pretty easy anyway if you crack it flat; i've really only smashed up some bigger snails a bit for some of my smaller clown loaches. never fed de-shelled snails particularly to my fish but my conure enjoys the garden snails i break open& pick out for him XD

 

[RLHam3]

the snails that i'm squishing are all just common pond snails with really thin shells. I'm not TOO worried about the shells hurting their stomach because like gerryjun said, they eat a lot of crabs in the wild(much thicker shell). the main thing i was curious about would be if the snails supply enough nutritional value to be the bichir's staple. the snails eat excess BN pleco food: algae wafers, cucumbers, lima beans, squash, etc. (plus anything else that they can find)

 

[Spiritofthesoul]

take a part of forceps and remove the snail from the shell. Even in the well, the shells could cause some digestive problems. As for nutrientional value. I believe, IMO. that pellets should be a staple food. But they would also need variety, so a couple of snails every week won't hurt.