Garion acquired 3 small apple/mystery snails last week, they are approx 1cm/half an inch in size. They are in a 20g with one small telescope, about 1 & 1/2 inches without tail.

I've only been feeding them algae wafers because any fresh food I add gets eaten by the telescope. Still, I was surprised how much snail poop I found when I vacuumed the tank today.

So, it's a bit like when adding a pleco, one only thinks of the cleaning they do, not the added mess they make. I hate to think how much poop they will make when they grow big.

I had to laugh at your post title. Just because you're right though. I think snails may just rival goldies....they are little poop machines!

Run a snail tank with white sand and check back after a week! They are so cute tho!

yes apple or mystery snails do poop a lot. I had two of them and that is one of the reasons I got rid of them, they pooped up the tank too much. I have two cory cats now and they clean without making such a mess. I was feeding mine algae wafer as well and he would snarf that down and then go suck up and suckup the goldfish food before they had a chance to eat it.

Believe it or not,the sand doesn't have to be white to see all the mess.
I have one tank with black sand that tends to even look worse because you notice all the slimed bits of food,poop,etc. Every time I turn around,I'm cleaning up the tank because it looks way worse than it probably is. Snails.... You gotta love them.

OMG! I know what you mean! I too, had to laugh when I saw your post because I know what your going through.

I have a snail tank and I do gravel vacuming twice a week just to keep the tank nice and clean. My snails are very healthy and very, very active.

Eat and poop, thats their motto! I do not get nearly the same amount of waste from my goldfish tank and I have very good filtration on my snail tank.

Mine are more along the lines of eat, breed, and poop.

Well, seeing how you brought that little area up, we tend to refer to that as "Snail Love" and that is a constant activity in my tank.

That's interesting, so do some of you guys have 'snail only' tanks? I suppose you could keep a few small tropicals in there as well, those that prefer a higher ph.

So how many snails would you keep in a 20g tank?

(hmmn, fortunately I have gravel so I don't get any of those snail trails. )

I like to figure on about 5 gallons of water per snail with filtration for at least twice the tank size, but right now my snail tank is WAY overcrowded because of all the babies I am trying to adopt out.

That sounds about right but my 20g would sure look empty with only 4 snails in it. How big do apple snails grow?

Brigs get about the size of a ping-pong ball. They don't really get too big. Canas can get the size of a softball and eat every plant you put into the tank. Brigs do not eat live plants, only dead and decaying plant matter.

So apple snails are brigs or canas? They are eating algae wafers but that's not decaying matter, this is confusing.

Can you post a pic? That will help with the ID process if you are not sure what they are.

I'm really loathe to use my camera, I hate it but it might be ok with snails because they don't move fast. Will get back to you.

It should be faily simple to get a good pic of the snail. Make sure to get a shot so that the spire (spiral part) of the shell is showing pretty well. Thanks!

Here is a pic of one of our snails. Sorry for the poor quality - that's why I hate this camera - it's useless for closeups and the software sucks.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v478/fishmerised/snail.jpg

[COLOR=purple]It looks like a brig to me. You have a Golden Apple Snail! Congrats![/color}

Thank you.