This may sound like a silly question but do you have to feed apple / mystery snails or do they just eat the algae and plants in the tank?

good to see that you realize they will be eating the plants. if there is enough food through those two sources, no. but if there isnt enough for them to eat you need to supplement food for them. algae wafers are good and lettuce, the darker the better, is good too.

when you said the darker the better do you mean the lettuce is better if it is dark? What do algae wafers do? Do they pollute the tank and make it unhealthy for the fish?

Thanks

alage wafers like any food can polute the tank if left in to long after a wafer has been in the tank if it is uneaten it will pollute so you should remove it with a net. by darker the better he means dark greens like kale are better than say iceberg.

anything left in the tank and is uneaten will rot and pollute the water. you may want to break the algae wafers into halves or even quarters so that it is all eaten within an hour or so. darker meaning dark varieties like kale and other very nutritious varieties. regular is good too. algae wafers are little round disks of algae (among other things) that sink to the bottom and are eaten by herbivores and algivores (if thats a word). most fish eat them, not just the ones you get it for.

thats what i thought he ment thanks for the help reptileguy and gynmonkey.

PS how do you tell if your apple / mystery snail is hungry and are apple / mystery snails both boys and girls or do they have a certain sex and if they are a certain sex how do you tell the difference between them?

ECHO......echo......

HA HA lol

My apple snail will latch on to any veggies I put in the tanks and not let go until they are gone. I prefer adding khale and zuchinni because they don't seem to decay as fast as lettuce. Just recently I found that pumpkins work well too. Feeding live veggies has also helped with my snails deteriorating shell problem.

how do you get the lettuce to sink to the bottom caus it just floats at the top and the snail dosnt get it

I would just rebber band it to a rock or you can buy veggie clips that stick to the side of your tank and you clip the lettuce on.

I fed my apple snail algae wafers and cucumber (split, deseeded, anchored into a veggie anchor; a piece about 3" long that he shared with my 14" pleco). I tried kale a few times but it just fouled the tank. Even with veggie clips, the animals had a hard time with it.

Most tanks will have enough algae and leftover food for baby apple snails but not adults.

Apple snails are sexual in that some are male and some female. See applesnail.net for all you ever wanted to know about their anatomy, sexing, etc.

I don't know that you'll know if the apple snail is hungry except he will make for leftover fish food quickly, any live plants and veggies of course, and maybe start to try to eat fake ones too.

My snail page: http://www.fishpondinfo.com/snail.htm

my snail hasnt been moving alot latley does this mean any thing

is it just sitting there in its shell? do you still have the goldfsh? if so i highly recomend you do something about the goldfish and danios in your 5 gallon. 2 goldfish and an apple snail will be way to much for a 5 gallon.

yeah it was just sitting in his shell but now it is moving again thanks