Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Beginner's question, are aquatic snails a good thing to have in the system?
Thanks for your opinions.

Well, I've had lots of snails in my systems and for the most part, they don't seem to cause problems unless they manage to clog something up.

(once upon a time, I tended to get lots of snails and snail shells caught in my pump trap and along with the snails and fish poo and food getting into the pump trap, I had to clean the darn thing every few days. Now the story is different since I changed my system over to CHIFT PIST, I only have to clean my pump trap about every 3-4 weeks.)

Now if you have lost of little holes in distrobution grids, snails getting caught in those might be more of a head ache but for the most part, I don't think the aquatic snails are something worth battling. Now that is just my experience with the tiny little snails that seem to frequent the waters of my system.

love it when someone asks a question i hadent quite got round to asking yet...... CHEERS

Aside from the problems mentioned by TCL the only issue I know of them is they are a needed host for the life cycle of parasetic worms, which also needs to spend time in birds also. A problem in large ponds but doubtful it would be a problem in an ap system. Snails in aquariums tend to clean the algea off of the sides of the tank.

I think my catfish have been eating the snails which might be why there are not many in my fish tanks anymore.

+1 something's been eating them, I had plenty, and now only see 1 or two

Thanks for the replies. I was thinking though, that because AP systems seem produce way more veg than fish that perhaps some of the water could be used to grow algae which could be fed upon by snails which in turn could be fed to the fish. In this way less could be spent on fish food and more fish produced. Anything like this being tried by anyone?

Lots of fish will eat algae directly but growing algae has some special concerns in recirculating aquaculture. See in pond culture where an algae bloom is use to feed fish like tilapia, it is a careful balance to get enough algae to feed the fish but not so much that it uses up all the dissolved oxygen and causes a system crash and kills everything in the pond. In recirculating aquaculture, there are usually far more fish for the amount of water in the system and trying to balance an algae bloom while maintaining appropriate oxygen levels as well as pH and everything else gets really tricky so we gennerally try to avoid growing lots of extra algae.

However, there might be ways to grow snails as fish food if you have fish that are partial to snails. If you were to have a waterfall or shallow section of water in the sun, algae does tend to grow on wet surfaces in the sun and if you can provide lots of extra aeration to that water after it leaves the "algae zone" it might work. I do suspect it would be really hard to grow enough snails to effectively feed very many fish though and the algae would tend to use up nutrients people often want for the plants.

I wonder if you could grow algae and snails effectively in a separate system, like many ppl do duckweed.
Extra nitates may be required (humonia works well) and there are no fish to kill.

Algae uses up DO? I thought algae were plants and that plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen... I must be missing something.

WP, like plants, algae, at night, switches from consuming carbon dioxide to consuming oxygen.

And , if you have an algae CRASH ,, they suddenly uise a LOT of oxygen

Ok, I get you... so if the algae were grown in a shallow pond which was taken out of the loop during the night and morning until DO levels were back up to spec; that might be workable right?

Arrrgh, I'd love to build a system now and experiment and tinker but I am in cold, dark, rainy and miserable England for at least 6 months more, working, before I go back to lovely Uruguay, buy some land and build a system! So until then I will just have to pore over other members' systems here on the forum.

It's gonna be a long 6 months!

I disagree with most of you- snails eat the aerobic bacterial slime that we depend on for the nitrate cycle as well as stationary algae. Too many snails and you reduce bio-filtration; they are vectors for parasitic diseases; they clog things with their bodies; they add to the oxygen issue, especially when they die; they leave slime trails when they do leave the water; they also eat the tiny hair roots of most plants and if you really want to turn someone off from eating AP food, just leave a tiny snail in their salad, after they've been eating it. In my opinion, get rid of them, if you can.

I've got a 5 gallon fishless aquarium stocked with European Rams Horn Snails, Red Chery Shrimp and Malaysian Trumpet Snails. The MTS live on and under the gravel and do a nice job of churning it. All of these species are very common in planted aquarium tanks and have no detrimental affect on plant growth.

This test tank feeds 4 very healthy strawberry plants



So if you are looking for a no fish alternative, shrimp and snails seem to work well on a small scale.