Mystery and Apple Snails do not burrow into the sand. They just nom on whatever they find. Go to PetsMart. They constantly get in MTS with their plant orders and are happy to give them away for free. I have maybe 5? in my 75 gallon and they've yet to blossom. I've read that as long as you don't over feed, your snail population will control itself.
I'm on month 2 of my assassin snail experiment and am thinking about adding more, once I can confirm whether my third snail is alive or dead. They have an annoying habit of both being nocturnal and staying buried and out of sight until they get larger.
Some things about assassin snails...
I wouldn't recommend them as an alternative to other types of snails. Instead, I would add them last, after you have a good handle on how rapidly your other snails are populating so they don't starve to death (since they're generally carnivorus).
Mine seemed to favor snails smaller than them until they grew to be bigger than a quarter inch, at which point they were brave enough to prowl and stalk the bigger snails.
If you do that, you should be able to balance your ecosystem so that you don't demolish your MTS/pond snail populations.
I know that the Mystery Snails don't burrow, I just wondered if they would be helpful at all. I would manually poke the soil a few times a week as an alternative to the other types of snails. I guess I might have to rethink this whole thing, since honestly I'd rather not have a bunch of animals eating each other, as silly as I know that probably sounds.
I know that the Mystery Snails don't burrow, I just wondered if they would be helpful at all. I would manually poke the soil a few times a week as an alternative to the other types of snails. I guess I might have to rethink this whole thing, since honestly I'd rather not have a bunch of animals eating each other, as silly as I know that probably sounds.
I believe if you use a small gravel on top of the soil layer instead of sand this will allow the air to escape on its own. Its the sand that traps the air until it becomes big enough bubbles to burst through the top of the sand
Oh really? I was planning on using the gravel if I decided to do this, so I might be able to make it work. My only concern with everything was the necessity of the additional animals to really make it all work. Because if possible I wanted to do it with just my Betta, although I know the point of an ecosystem is having multiple organisms each doing a "job" to create a stable environment. So I just don't know how successful it would be with only plants and one Betta.
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