Best snails for cleaning up detritus?

[DUHK]

I was wondering what is the best kind of snail for eating up detritus and where can I find them.

Thanks!

[Mzungu]

What exactly do you mean by "detritus?" Nothing out there will eat poop, if that's what you mean. :)

[armthehomeless]

The "gravel vacuum" snail.

[cichlid1409]

The "gravel vacuum" snail.

they are right DUHK the best thing snails are for is eating some algae and eating left over food that can foul your water.

[DUHK]

Well I read on an article in a fish book and it says "Mystery snails (Pomacea bridgesii) can be a useful addition to the nursery aquarium as they help clean the tank of detritus and eat any surplus food, which has a positive effect on water quality", which made me wonder if there were any other kind of snails that would do that.

[PhishPhreek]

I prefer the Columbian Ramshorn snails but they have been outlawed.

yes, they do http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detritus

[Mzungu]

Tim, you literally took the words right out of my mouth!! Good one.

Mystery snails would probably be good for fry tanks and such, since there's always a lot of food in fry tanks. But it's also good to do LOTS of water changes in fry tanks, so... But yes, I think mystery snails would be better than your run-of-the-mill ramshorns or pond snails, because it's much easier to control their breeding (they lay large bunches of eggs that are easy to see, versus the other snails that appear out of nowhere no matter how many batches of eggs you take out.) With the ability to control their breeding, you won't have the problems of snail population booms, which just add more bioload and detritus to the tank, and you end up doing just as many water changes as you would without them.

[jeebus]

The "gravel vacuum" snail.

ISN'T THAT WHAT YOU SOLD ME!?!?



j/k

[armthehomeless]

To clarify - Phishphreek is right - snails will eat detritus. Extra fish food and decaying plant matter counts as types of detritus. I don't think anybody was disagreeing with that.

What Mzungu and cichlid1409 (and I) are saying is that there is no good way to avoid manual cleanup completely. Don't add snails to a tank to "clean it up" and expect not to have to do anything else. Waste does not disappear with the addition of snails (Law of Conservation of Matter). Everyone, feel free to correct me if I'm misleading anyone or putting words in someone's mouth that shouldn't be there.

[jeebus]

Wouldn't some amount of the waste disappear when eaten by the snails as it would be used as energy and some as body mass?

[armthehomeless]

Fair enough. Snails still produce waste.

[PhishPhreek]

Some call it waste, some call it raw materials - See organic life & the carbon cycle

http://chemistry.about.com/od/geochemistry/ss/carboncycle.htm

Photoautotrophs are responsible for most of the conversion of carbon into organic nutrients. Photoautotrophs, primarily plants and algae, use light from the sun, carbon dioxide, and water to make organic carbon compounds (e.g., glucose).

Carbon returns to the atmosphere and hydrosphere through: decay (as carbon dioxide if oxygen is present or as methane, CH4, if oxygen is not present)