# What happened to the pond snails?



## arenkel (Nov 28, 2011)

So, I bought some plants from my lfs. Unsurprisingly, they came with a few hitchhikers-- pond snails. I didn't really care, since I was just gonna try to trap them and put them in a goldfish tank.

I got some nerite snails, and between the nerites and the pond snails, the tank was cleaned of algae pretty quickly.

Then, earlier this week, I got three platies.

I looked into my tank the other day, and realized that I couldn't find any pond snails. I thought "Hmm, that's odd. Normally they're everywhere." Then I noticed some empty shells on the filter intake and on the substrate near the intake. I haven't been able to find any live pond snails in my tank.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm perfectly happy they're gone. But I'm curious-- what happened to them? Did the platies or nerites kill them, or did they get sucked out of their shell,s or what?

[In case it's relevant, my tank is a 20 gallon long with an Aqueon 30 filter; pH is 8.0 and the water is relatively hard.]


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## phil_n_fish (Nov 19, 2011)

The snails in my tank tend to keep flipping themselves on their backs and they would die if I didn't come home for the day to flip them back over. Sometimes I have a snail die for no reason. 
In result, whenever I buy snails, I buy them in big numbers because I will expect atleast 20% of the snails I bought to die in a couple of months. I have a saltwater tank so the hermit crabs just take to the empty snail shells


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## arenkel (Nov 28, 2011)

Well, the snails that I actually paid for and wanted (nerites) seem to be doing just fine, so I'm happy about that. I'm just curious about the mysteriously disappearing pond snails...


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Platies will not mess with them much, but they do love to eat them if you smash them like I do


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