With ramshorn snails being a very popular addition to aquariums due to being able to eat algae, disagreed fish food, and various other waste, we often see people reaching out and asking questions about baby ramshorn snails due to how quickly adult ramshorn snails can reproduce.
On top of that, many people also consider ramshorn snails as pest to their tanks and it can be common to accidentally add some baby ramshorn snails to your tank when purchasing new live plants so we see people asking about how you are able to get rid of them.
As there are so many people reaching out and asking questions about baby ramshorn snails each month, we have decided to publish this dedicated article going over the more commonly asked questions that we see.
Due to frequently seeing these questions time and time again, we are hoping that our article will be able to help a large number of our readers who have noticed baby ramshorn snails in their aquariums.
Due to covering a range of questions that we see about baby ramshorn snails in this article, we have added a table of contents below.
It should make it is easy as possible for you to navigate the article and skip to the specific questions that you want answers to without you having to skim over the full article.
How to Care for Baby Ramshorn Snails
Baby ramshorn snails are very low maintenance and require minimal care due to eating algae and discarded food in your tank.
This often means that no additional effort is required from you to care for your baby ramshorn snails in your tank and that you can usually just leave them to do their thing.
This is actually the main reason that so many people choose to add ramshorn snails to their aquarium be them fully grown adults or babies due to them being able to eat algae and discarded food.
This can reduce the levels of tank maintenance required on your part due to the snails eating much of what you would otherwise have to clean out yourself.
That said though, ramshorn snails really do reproduce at a rapid pace with a baby ramshorn snail being able to lay its own eggs within a few months leading to the exponential growth of your snail population in your tank.
Although the available food will regular the maximum population of ramshorn snails in your tank, many people will take steps to control their population.
How Do I Get Rid of Baby Ramshorn Snails?
The three main ways to get rid of baby ramshorn snails in your tank are to use an aquatic snail trap, use a snail catcher or to add a snail eater to your aquarium.
All three have their advantages and disadvantages depending on your situation with all three having been proven to get rid of baby ramshorn snails with ease.
Most people choose to take advantage of a cheap snail trap in their aquarium when trying to catch and remove the baby ramshorn snails.
This can actually be surprisingly efficient in many cases as you simply wait for the snails to congregate on the trap after being attracted by the bait and then you remove the trap with all of the snails in it.
Although a snail catcher is a very popular option that is easy to use and has a great reputation for catching snails of all shapes and sizes, it can take a large amount of time.
If you have a number of baby ramshorn snails in your aquarium that you are wanting to remove, a snail catcher will often be too much time and effort with the trap or a snail eater being a better option.
What Will Eat Baby Ramshorn Snails?
The best snail eater for baby ramshorn snails has to be the assassin snail and they are a very popular option for snail population control.
An adult mystery snail will do a great job of managing the population of the ramshorn snails in your tank and they tend to enjoy the taste of ramshorn snails.
Thankfully, assassin snails are very cheap online so you can add a single assassin snail to your tank and leave it to eat the baby and adult ramshorn snails while you go about your business.
You then simply clear the empty ramshorn snail shells from your tank once per week as a part of your regular tank cleaning.
The majority of the time it is better to just add a single assassin snail as they can end up fighting each other if you try to add multiple assassin snails to the same tank.
An adult assassin snail can eat a surprising number of ramshorn snails though and should be able to keep the population under control for a small to medium tank without issue.
Do Ramshorn Snails Eat Their Babies?
Although ramshorn snails will not eat their own babies, they have been seen to eat the eggs of other ramshorn snails prior to them hatching. This is a very common behaviour in ramshorn snails and has been observed many times.
Depending on how many adult ramshorn snails you have in your tank, this could actually work to your advantage and serve as a method of reducing the potential population of the ramshorn snails in your tank too.
As we mentioned above, some people do consider ramshorn snails to be pests as there is usually a much better option for their main job such as a pleco but the pleco will not exponentially breed and produce a large amount of poop.
Just because adult ramshorn snails will eat fertilized ramshorn snail eggs does not mean that they are enough to control the population of ramshorn snails in your tank though.
Adult ramshorn snails will lay their eggs everywhere so even though they will eat a large number of their own eggs, there are still plenty ready to hatch.
How Big Are Baby Ramshorn Snails?
Baby ramshorn snails are usually less than a millimetre in size when they first hatch but they rapidly grow. Ramshorn snails are also able to reproduce before they are fully grown too with females being able to produce eggs within a few months of hatching.
Although a baby ramshorn snail will often try to dig into the substrate of your tank when it first hatches to try and avoid predators, after a few days, they will energy and often climb up the sides your tank making them very easy to see.
This is often the first indication that you have baby ramshorn snails in your aquarium as their small size can make them very difficult to see against the substrate at first.
As the baby ramshorn snails grow at a rapid pace, even after the initial first few days of hatching, they have usually doubled in size making them much easier to see in your tank.
Within about a week they will usually have doubled in size again and then grow at a steady rate from then on.
Are Baby Ramshorn Snails Good?
Baby ramshorn snails can be considered good as they will eat algae and leftover food but they can also be considered bad as they poop a lot and don’t eat as many algae or leftover food as something like a nerite snail relative to their size.
Baby ramshorn snails also grow rapidly and reproduce at an exponential rate so many people consider them to be pests.
On the flipside of that though, ramshorn snails are one of the best cold water algae eaters that you are able to get so if you are keeping something like an axolotl that requires colder water or need an algae eater for an outdoor pond then they can be a great option.
As with all additions to your aquarium, it depends on your own specific situation and what you need the snail for.
That said though, we would consider a bottom feeder like a nerite snail or a cherry shrimp to be a far superior option to a ramshorn snail for the majority of our readers unless you specifically need something for cold water.
They tend to do a much better job than a ramshorn snail in most situations and will out eat the ramshorn snail when it comes to algae and discarded food consumption too.
Conclusion
That brings our article going over the baby ramshorn snail to an end. We hope that we have been able to help as many of our readers as possible and that we have also been able to answer any of your questions about keeping baby ramshorn snails. Although they are very easy to care for, they do tend to be more of a pain than they are worth for most people and this is why so many people will try to keep ramshorn snails out of their tanks.
