# Snails and tank cycling...questions



## P.senegalus (Aug 18, 2011)

Can you use snails like Malaysian trumpet snails or similar sized ones to cycle an aquarium? along with hardy plants? Or would that take too long to do? I'm thinking of ordering this plant but it has some sort of snail that looks like mts, and besides being useful in sandy tanks i wonder if they can serve this purpose?

ps. on a side note, I'm still creeped out a little by snails however now I don't freak if I touch them lol. Basically if i'm going to have snails, I want to be able to see them doing things unlike the pest snails but I don't want gigantic apple sized snails and i don't want to buy the actual snails, but if I happened to get mts on a new plant I think I could live with that.


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## kcrunch (Aug 17, 2012)

When I cycled my tank for the first go round, I had some assassin snails a few hardy plants but I did throw in 2 convicts and 2 tinfoil barbs. I rally am not sure how much productive addition they were to the cycle of the tank but they lived through it and the tank was ready in a few weeks. BTW all of the fish and the snails had survived until after the storm hit. 

If you are going to do that with the snails I would add a shrimp in a stocking to the cycling tank actually you could cycle it with 2 shrimp the one in the stocking and the one you chip into smaller bits to feed the snails. I really dont think the snails alone will create enough of a bio load on the tank, but they will contribute in the small amounts they do actually produce.


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## P.senegalus (Aug 18, 2011)

Ok, I may just stick to the fishless cycle because the plants I wanted have been sold. Besides I really don't have room for another tank, I just wanted an excuse to set the extra one up


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