How To Keep Nerite Snails From Escaping

Snails must be one of the most underrated parts of freshwater fishkeeping:

They sift through your substrate, keeping it clean.

Nerite snails even eat algae.

Plus, they only expect darn absurd.

If you lot're looking into getting nerite snails, you're in luck. In this guide, I'thousand going to comprehend everything you demand to know to successfully keep nerites.

Permit's start with what your tank parameters should exist:

Parameter	Adequate Range
Care Level	Piece of cake
Temperament	Peaceful
PH	seven.5-8.5
Temperature	72-85F
Hardness	five-fifteen dKH
Lifespan	i Twelvemonth (On Average; Upward to ii years)
Size	1"
Diet	Algae & Dead Plants + Calcium Source
Tank Size	5 gal for i snail + 2-5 gal per extra snail

There are also some mistakes that people commonly make that can cause their snail's shells to be eaten away or them to be killed outright.

I'll be roofing some of those in the sections to follow.

Nerite Snail Beliefs

Nerite snails are an amazing little creature.

They may be slow, but they exercise go around. They are excellent climbers, and they will spend their days climbing all over your tank eating algae. Have a look:

They will generally be awake for between 33-41 hours at a time, after which they'll enter their sleep cycle. During this time, they'll have 7 xx infinitesimal naps spread out over 13 hours. (Source)

Nerite Snail Lifespan

If you get a nerite snail, yous can expect information technology to live about a year on average.

This might be longer or shorter, depending on the level of intendance you lot provide information technology.

For instance, if your tank is inhospitable to snails – either wrong water conditions or because of fish trying to eat them – they may not survive the first nighttime.

If you lot use medication containing copper, that volition also kill them pretty quickly.

Given perfect conditions, notwithstanding, they could alive for two years or more.

Nosotros'll cover more virtually this in the Water Weather and Feeding sections.

The Great Escape

If you don't provide the right conditions, nerite snails aren't the type to simply lay there and die.

Instead, they will likely stage an escape.

As I mentioned before, nerite snails are excellent climbers. If you don't have a tight-plumbing fixtures lid, they volition quickly climb out of your tank and endeavor to detect somewhere else more favorable to live.

Near times this happens, you lot'll find them expressionless nearby the tank.

When provided the proper water weather, however, they should be less likely to try to escape.

Upside Down

Though they are good climbers, they will occasionally fall off something and wind up on their backs.

This could exist considering they were trying to climb on a plant that couldn't support their weight or because they slipped and savage off the glass.

In some cases, it could likewise happen because your fish is bullying them.

If they don't accept anything they can grab onto, they might not be able to correct themselves.

In that case, you should lend a hand and turn them right side upward again.

spotted nerite snail (Neritina natalensis) eating on a rock in a fish tank
ID 166024520 © Juan Carlos Juarez | Dreamstime.com

Tank Setup

Tank setup is peradventure one of the nearly important aspects of keeping nerite snails.

Having the right food, water conditions, and habitat can set you upwardly with an near maintenance gratis addition to your aquarium.

If your tank is also far out of residual, however, y'all can spend a lot of time and try trying to fix problems and save them.

H2o Weather condition

The get-go thing nosotros need to cover is water parameters.

Nerite snails like relatively high PH of vii.five-8.5 (higher in this range is better) and water with a hardness of 5-12 (preferably towards the center of this range).

This is important, because if your PH and dKH is also low, your snails tin first developing holes in their shells.

The most commonly used test kit – the API Freshwater Main Test Kit – does non contain a test for Carbonate Hardness (dKH). Y'all'll desire to buy a separate test kit for hardness and test that as well if you're planning on keeping nerites.

If your dKH or PH is too depression, you can raise them with products from Seachem or another manufacturer available at your local fish store.

Nerite Snails and Saltwater

In that location are some snails that won't tolerate table salt at all.

Fifty-fifty just adding common salt to cure ich is out of the question.

Nerite snails are non one of these snails. They love salt.

Nerite snails can live in a wide range of salinity – from freshwater tanks all the way upward to total saltwater reef tanks.

They are naturally found in estuaries where freshwater rivers are dumping into saltwater bodies, and so they are used to existence in an environment where at that place is a variable corporeality of table salt depending on when and where they are.

More than simply loving it, it is necessary to their lifecycle:

In order to breed successfully, they must be in stagnant (semi-salty) water.

They'll withal lay eggs regardless, simply we'll cover that in more than particular later.

Luckily, brackish water is simply necessary for breeding them. They will alive happily in freshwater, saltwater, or annihilation in betwixt.

Nerite Snail Bioload

Nerite snails aren't super messy (like mystery snails), merely they do contribute to the bioload in your tank.

Their bioload would be considered "small", but that doesn't actually say much.

How much bioload they have depends on what you're feeding them.

For instance, if your tank has enough algae that they can survive just eating that, they aren't adding any actress ammonia into your water.

The algae is growing and absorbing algae from your water, and the snails are eating the algae and pooping the ammonia back into your water.

They do withal add together ammonia (since when it's in the algae it isn't floating around harming your fish), but they're just recycling what's already in your tank.

If your tank is make clean enough that yous take to feed them, however, they volition exist adding extra ammonia in from whatever yous're feeding them.

If your tank is already shut to being fully stocked, the best advice I take for nerite snails is to slowly add them and continue to test your water for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate.

This volition besides prevent you from adding more than your aquarium can feed.

If you lot desire to come across whether you tin add nerites safely or not, check out the AqAdvisor app.

Feeding Nerite Snails

Nerite snails will ideally exist able to survive solely based on the undesirable things that collect in your tank. (Such every bit algae.)

Some types of nerite snails will only eat algae (the horned nerite would be ane example). Others have a more varied menu.

In addition to their food (discussed below), one thing y'all need to provide them is a source of calcium. This volition help them in properly growing their shells.

This can take a few forms. The easiest and cheapest of these is just to get a cuttlebone and drop it in your aquarium.

You can pick one of these upward in the bird section at Walmart or another local pet store. They don't go bad, but they will eventually get-go breaking apart. At that point y'all can replace it with a new one if desired.

Practise Nerite Snails Eat Algae?

They will eat most types of algae, including:

Green algae
Diatoms
Hair algae
Red algae

Ane type of algae they won't eat, notwithstanding, is bluish-green algae. They also may not eat greenish spot algae. Y'all're on your ain if your tank is infested with either of those.

An important note is that you shouldn't expect your nerite snails to completely rid y'all of the algae in your tank.

If your tank has a fiddling algae, adding a snail might exist a adept affair. If information technology's being overrun with algae, you need to effigy out the root cause and set it.

Some of the things yous can await at are reducing the corporeality of light your tank gets (add calorie-free blocking defunction to any nearby windows, and reduce tank lighting to 8 hours per day) and adjusting the balance of CO2 and fertilizer you lot add to your tank.

If your tank doesn't have enough algae, you may be able to get your nerite snail to eat algae wafers, but this isn't a sure thing.

Practise Nerite Snails Eat Plants?

Nerite snails will also eat dead plant thing.

If you put a new institute in, and information technology starts to cook, the nerite snails will consider all of the melting leaves to exist food.

In this regard, they can act equally a make clean upward crew, eating things you'd otherwise accept to cut and remove.

They won't eat living plant matter, however, then if you come across them "eating" your plants, it's probably for one of these reasons:

The leaf or stem is dying, and they're eating the unhealthy/dying part of the plant.
The leaf has algae on it, and they're grazing on the algae (not the plant itself).

Either way, there shouldn't be any cause for business organization.

Practice Nerite Snails Eat Leftover Nutrient?

Whether snails will swallow leftover nutrient or fish poop sitting at the bottom of your aquarium depends on the species of snail and – to a certain extent – the individual snail in question.

Some nerites – like the horned nerite – are extremely picky and volition but consume algae. Others may swallow algae wafers, leftover fish nutrient, fish poop, or other waste. Some volition eat cucumber or zucchini but non wafers or pellets.

You shouldn't expect a nerite snail to eat any of these things. If they do, it'due south a bonus, simply if y'all're looking for something that volition clean upward everything on the lesser of your aquarium, you'll want to get a dissimilar type of snail.

In this example, you lot'd desire to await at a mystery snail, which will eat pretty much anything from fish food to expressionless plants to dead fish.

Practise Nerite Snails Eat Other Snails?

Nerite snails will definitely not eat other snails.

There are occasional reports of "my snail is attacking my other snail", but these normally are just the two snails convenance.

They are peaceful snails and should be suitable for putting in tanks with other snails, shrimp, and fish, if those fish won't attack them.

Let's comprehend some proficient tank mates to stock with your nerites:

Tank Mates

Equally I mentioned above, nerites generally are peaceful creatures. This means you lot won't accept to worry about them harming anything else in your aquarium.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that you can put them in with anything.

Some types of fish will attack or nifty them, which can shorten their lifespan drastically.

Some snails (like the assassin snail) will outright hunt and eat them.

Here is an incomplete list of tank mates that you should be able to safely house with a nerite snail:

Shrimp
Snails (except ones like the assassin snail that eat other snails)
Tetras
Guppies
Barbs
Rasbora
Danios
Corydoras
Otos

Avoid aggressive fish like cichlids or pea puffers (which will kill all your snails for fun).

Nerite Snails and Betta

Betta are a mixed bag in terms of whether they can be kept with nerite snails or non.

Some of them dear nerites.

Other ones will bully them constantly.

If you accept a laid back betta, you tin endeavour adding a nerite in if you want. Y'all should have another tank you can move the nerite to, even so, just incase things don't get well.

Convenance Nerite Snails

In a standard freshwater or saltwater aquarium, convenance nerite snails is pretty much impossible. (Annotation – at that place are reportedly some varieties that will brood successfully in total saltwater, but nigh of the available snails require brackish h2o to breed.)

Don't get me wrong – they'll even so cover your aquarium in eggs.

Those eggs but won't hatch into viable snails.

In lodge to make sure they can successfully breed, y'all demand to put them in brackish water.

To create the correct h2o, get a hydrometer and add marine salt to a breeding tank until you reach a SG of betwixt 1.002 – 1.005. It'southward of import that you use marine salt and not aquarium salt for this.

Y'all accept two options from this betoken. Either:

Motion a group of nerites into the breeding tank (a big enough group that you know there are males and females both).
Wait until eggs are laid and fertilized in your existing aquarium, and movement the objects covered in eggs to your breeding tank.

From there, the eggs should hatch into infant snails.

These babies volition need to feed on algae, so you should either await until algae develops in your breeding tank, or you should motion objects covered in algae over with the eggs. Putting the tank in front of a window may assistance in the growth of algae in the breeding tank.

Baby Nerite Snail Care

Once the babies hatch, you just have to provide them the right atmospheric condition until they are big enough to move back to your freshwater tanks.

You should remove whatever other snails from your breeding tank. This will ensure your babies aren't out-competed for algae.

Perform normal maintenance on your breeding tank, and let them grow for at least a month before attempting to move them over to a normal tank.

Removing Nerite Snail Eggs

The biggest downward side of nerites is that they lay eggs everywhere.

Specially if yous take driftwood in your tank.

These eggs tin exist extremely difficult to remove, too.

Luckily, they usually will taper off and/or terminate laying eggs eventually (until you get new nerite snails). The eggs, if left lone, will as well eventually dissolve.

If you lot want to remove them more quickly, even so, it tin can (mostly) be washed.

There are two main tools for this that you need:

A scraper. Can exist a razor blade, toothpick, or commercial aquarium scraper.
A brush. Can be a toothbrush or aquarium scrubber sponge.

It requires a lot of elbow grease, but it's not that hard to do.

Step 1 is to remove the eggs with your scraper. Afterwards that, take your brush to anything left of the egg that is stuck to the surface of your aquarium/decorations.

This can exist considerably more hard to do with driftwood (unfortunately their favorite matter to lay eggs on), but you tin can try information technology there as well.

At that place isn't any way to stop them from laying the eggs in the starting time place though. If this is a deal breaker, you may want to look for another species of snail.

Nerite Snail Diseases

There isn't a dandy bargain of information bachelor on diseases that nerite snails might become.

A few sources mention edema and other swelling related diseases, but I've not personally seen this or spoken to someone who had this happen in their nerites.

What is near common are things that result in your nerite snail constantly ending up on their back.

This can happen for a few reasons:

The water parameters inverse drastically. (For case, suddenly calculation a lot of table salt can cause this.)
You recently used a medication that your snail is reacting badly to. A lot of medications and additives contain copper, which can impale your nerite snail.

In these cases, the best thing you can practice is move your nerite snail to a new container of water and add something like Seachem Prime number. Eventually, your snail will either die or recover from the irritation caused by whatever y'all added to your h2o.

And so, you can set the water in your tank and reintroduce your nerite.

Another business organisation are parasites.

For example, if yous take ich in your aquarium, you may notice white spots on your snail'due south shell. These don't seem to harm the snail, only ich is dangerous to the fish in your aquarium. Because of this, information technology should also be treated.

Be warned:

As we discussed above, a lot of medications tin kill snails.

Whatever medication you use, it must be safe for nerite snails. Seachem ParaGuard is one of the medications that tin can safely exist used with nerite snails. It treats parasites besides as a lot of other bacterial, fungal, and viral diseases in your aquarium.

Overall, nerite snails are generally healthy creatures that shouldn't have too many diseases.

In Determination

Nerite snails are unproblematic and easy to keep if you stick to the water parameters I listed higher up and make sure they take food and calcium available to them.

I definitely recommend them if y'all're looking for a snail for your aquarium, as long as you don't mind dealing with eggs everywhere.

Source: https://tinyunderwater.com/nerite-snails/