Hi everyone,
I’m curious about rabbit snails (Tylomelania) and whether they can react differently to specific fish species — almost like having individual “personalities”.
Here’s my situation:
I had my rabbit snails in a tank with guppies, and they were active, moving around and eating normally. After adding neon tetras, the snails became almost completely inactive for weeks. They stayed out of their shells (not dead), but barely moved and didn’t eat.
As a test, I moved one snail to a calm shrimp tank (lower temperature, no fish), and within less than an hour it became active again.
Water parameters and temperature are within acceptable ranges, and the only real difference seems to be the type of fish and how active they are.
So my questions are:
Can rabbit snails be stressed by specific fish species, even if the fish are peaceful?
Do individual rabbit snails have different tolerance levels / “personalities”?
Has anyone else seen rabbit snails shut down with fast schooling fish like tetras, but do fine with guppies or shrimp?
Would love to hear other people’s experiences. Thanks!
Posted by Anonymous_walk
2 Comments
That’s interesting, I have endlers and cardinals in my tank and the endlers are far more likely to bother the snails etc than the cardinals (they aren’t aggressive, just more curious and explorative), I’d have thought the same would be true with guppies and neons?
tetras are renowned for being nippy (basically all mine have adhd, widows, rummy and neons) mine have pecked off the tentacles of all my snails (ramshorns) they don’t seem to get the shrimp, likely because they react quicker, but yes I can believe cardinals are probably biting the big wiggly tentacle causing them to hide.
I’ve been told that you can prevent them from nipping at snails by adding slow release foods like weekend tablets, but snails just swarm them from my experience maybe try feeding small amounts more regularly? see if it helps