# How good of an algae eater is a ramshorn snail?



## battered (Jan 1, 2012)

Just curious. Currently, the only way to keep my Fluval Spec in balance with the Fluval 13w light is with a single nerite. Otherwise, algae covers the glass in days (this is the worst type of algae I get in there). What if I replaced that nerite with a ramshorn; would it be able to do the same job?


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## BBradbury (Nov 8, 2010)

*Ramshorn Snails*



battered said:


> Just curious. Currently, the only way to keep my Fluval Spec in balance with the Fluval 13w light is with a single nerite. Otherwise, algae covers the glass in days (this is the worst type of algae I get in there). What if I replaced that nerite with a ramshorn; would it be able to do the same job?


Hello bat...

Ramshorn snails have worked wonders in my planted tanks. The little guys are fast breeders and will eat all kinds of algae, plus any dead or decaying plant and fish material. The best thing, they won't damage any healthy plants. Attached is a pic of one of my 55 G tanks. There's no visible algae in any of them. The small, dark dots on the glass are the snails.

B


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## Soothing Shrimp (Nov 9, 2011)

Ramshorns are awesome at eating algae. I'll give an example. A while back I had a 10g with glass so covered in algae you couldn't see through it. 10 ramshorn snails and 2 days later, all algae gone. On the flipside, with that much food they breed like crazy.


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## somewhatshocked (Aug 8, 2011)

Both of the folks who responded to you hit the nail on the head.

Ramshorns are magical little creatures and keep my tanks spotless. Particularly on the leftover food front. They're available in so many colors that you can really make them a beautiful addition to any planted tank.


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## battered (Jan 1, 2012)

Great! This gives me the confidence to take the nerite out and experiment.


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## diwu13 (Sep 20, 2011)

You can just keep the nerite in... it's not going to harm anything :X


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## Kunsthure (Aug 2, 2010)

I don't like any snails in my tanks that can reproduce. I deal with MTS because I have to, but otherwise I'm a nerite girl for algae. 8 dime-sized batiki nerites have cleaned my 37g of several kinds of algae within a week, and there was A LOT of it. 

-Lisa


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## battered (Jan 1, 2012)

I definitely agree with you in that I like nerites/ nonreproducing (in tank at least) snails a lot more than MTS and ramshorn. However, I gotta have my MTS for my sand tanks, and there's only been 1 ramshorn snail in my Spec for a while.


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## magnum (Jun 23, 2011)

I have used nerite snails, but I did not like cleaning the white eggs they left everywhere. I decided to try ramshorn snails and I've decided I like them much better than nerite snails. They're population booms at first when there is an abundance of food/algae, but their population shrinks to a more respectable size in time.


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## daworldisblack (Jan 12, 2012)

Yeap .. Multiple nerites= white eggs everywhere. Also they crawl out of the tank and commit suicide if not caught in time. Ramshorns on the other hand stay inside always. They do breed like crazy but if you have enough adults i find the babies wont be able to compete for food and so population is sorta under control.


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## DogFish (Jul 16, 2011)

I use both. Nerite can really make a impact fast on algae, two clean some latge pc of encrusted Mopane driftwood in two days. Looke like i took a sander to the wood.

However, they just can get unto place where Ramshorns can. The clean the small steins & leaves where nerite won't go.

Keep the excess fish food to a min. and they don't get out of control.


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