Tropical Fish Hobby Experience

Apple Snails aka Mystery Snails are very nice to look at. They are very mobile and come in different colours and shades. The first time i came across these critters was when I was 14, they were marketed as Golden snails 'kuhol' and sold in shops, imported from Thailand apparently. They quickly turned out to be pests eating everything in the ponds and ruining farmers livelyhood i.e. rice paddies [sic]. The ones that are sold here in the UK are quite smaller, they still look the same, but they don't eat the aquarium plants like the ones in the Philippines. Must be a different specie or something. Unfortunately, i had to get rid of these snails as they are Illegal here in the UK and the whole of EU. It was nice having them, luckily i still have videos of these snails. Here's one laying her eggs below Apple snails breeding, clip below: They can overtake your aquarium if you don't keep an eye on the eggs they lay on the hood or the sides of ...

This was my aquarium before i ever dropped 7 assassin snails. Then I decided to introduce assassin snails a few months later because they kinda look interesting and a bit like proper marine invertebrates you see in saltwater aquariums. They look quite bright as well. But as their name suggests, they do kill other snails in the fishtank. So after they had killed every snail, including the ugly bladder snails, in that once gorgeous aquarium, this is what happened. Overrun by algae on every nook and cranny. absolutely depressing to look at. I cannot even put any nerite snail to get rid of that hard to scrub green algae on the front panel of the aquarium, as they would end up as lunch for these pests. Hence, by experience, if you wish to keep a planted aquarium with less maintenance with the help of algae eating plants, then assassin snails are no go. I may have to ditch them soon.