# German Blue Rams control snails?



## NeonFlux (Apr 10, 2008)

Wow never heard of this


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## iam1ru12 (Feb 17, 2009)

Not me. I had three of them in a 55 and when the snail population exploded, they simply ignored the snails. Only when the yoyo loaches arrived was the snail population controlled.


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## legomaniac89 (Mar 16, 2008)

If they do control snails I've never noticed. I have a male GBR with around 20 million MTS and he totally ignored them.

What kind of snails did you have? I could see a GBR snacking on small ramshorns or pond snails


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## Aquarist_Fist (Jul 22, 2008)

I have two Gold Rams, and they will try eating anything that is not quick enough. They have learned to leave otos alone, but they eat snails. I have seen them pull out of its shell and partly eat a quarter-sized apple snail. That one was probably sick or dying, but they do eat small pond snails. Rams are not strong or aggressive, but they are smart and persistent.


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## Axelrodi202 (Jul 29, 2008)

Well, they _are_ cichlids. :icon_roll


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## Bugman (Jan 7, 2008)

Have GBR's in both planted and bare bottom breeding tanks. Snails in all of them. They ignor them in all of the tanks.


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## x2h (Dec 23, 2008)

legomaniac89 said:


> If they do control snails I've never noticed. I have a male GBR with around 20 million MTS and he totally ignored them.
> 
> What kind of snails did you have? I could see a GBR snacking on small ramshorns or pond snails


I don't know what kind of snails I have in my tank. There were two kinds, one is kind of brownish, 5 mm, the other kind is kind of red and a little bigger. They probably hitch hiked into my tank with some plants. Both are gone now anyway.


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## rich815 (May 21, 2008)

I had a pair for a while. They never touched my ramshorns. 

Later, I got a pair of dwarf puffers and the ramshorns were all gone in about a week!


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## Mark Allred (May 3, 2013)

Reviving an old thread here. I had been noticing a lot of pond snail shells in my 65, and wondered why they were dying. A few days ago, I witnessed one of my Gold Rams plucking snail meat from a pond snail shell. I have juvenile Apple snails in this tank, hatched from eggs, and they don't appear to be interested in them. Maybe I should put a few GBRs in my 125.


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## Betta Maniac (Dec 3, 2010)

Same here. Got a pair a few weeks ago and they cleaned the tank out. Not a snail to be seen. Just a few empty shells here and there ...


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## thelub (Jan 4, 2013)

I've been crushing ramshorn snails in my tank for a couple weeks now hoping either the gold rams or the corys will eat the meat. Maybe my rams will get a taste for snail and start going after them on their own. I know shrimp like snail meat when I crush them in my shrimp tank.


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## JonHawaii (Sep 29, 2014)

I just purchased one a couple days ago and he only eats baby snails and nothing else. He's just busy searching and eating any small baby snails he could find! It's awesome cause I consider the snails in my tank a pest.


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