[Rainer]

I added a mystery snail to a tank with a smooth, sand substrate. Now the tank looks like an artillery target thanks to the snail's excavations. It selects a spot and digs until its shell is half buried, then stays in place for many hours.

The only other occupant is an amano. Is the snail going after subsurface algae? Or is this normal behavior I've missed because my other tanks all have gravel substrate?

 

[wicca27]

im not sure what causes it but i have had mystery snails do this also. ive even had assassin snails do this

 

[Schreckeng]

im not sure what causes it but i have had mystery snails do this also. ive even had assassin snails do this

All assassin snails burrow, I'm not sure about the mystery snails though, I'm switching my tank to sand so I guess I'll find out

 

[pinkman]

ive read that many different types of snails willl spend time burrowing into
the substrate in search for food.

 

[Rainer]

How much food do mystery snails need? This snail and the amano are in a 9g, lightly planted tank (ten stem plants, a small stand of HG, DHG belem, and mini pellia on the rocks, plus some RRF). I've been giving them a very small alfalfa pellet once a week along with a couple small flakes of fish food for protein. Is that enough?

I dropped part of an algae tab next to the snail a couple of hours ago - he still hasn't noticed it.

 

[peachii]

I drop a part of an algae wafer in my tanks every other day for the snails, but I have ramhorns that I want to breed in each tank so I make sure they have plenty of food so they will multiply heavily.

The mystery snails take about 30 seconds to start heading towards the wafer and are on it in less then a minute usually. Within about 5 minutes I usually have a snail pile on top of the food.

My snails ignored the cheap wal-mart wafers but after I bought the New Life spectrum H20 stable wafers and kensfish 5 wafer blend - they attack those things like they haven't eaten in weeks.