Hi everyone. I wonder if I could call on the wisdom of the forum for advice on choosing some suitable snails?


I have a baby biorb, 15 litres, cold water, 3 fish (Chinese golden algae eater and 2 danios) and 'some' auger snails. I say 'some' because I hardly ever see them - where the hell do they all hide? Very occasionally they all come out together and give me a surprise and there must be at least a dozen tiny ones and a couple about half an inch long.


I'm looking for something that will help keep the algae down and add some interest - either colourful, stripey, active etc. I used to have golden apple snails which were ideal because they were colourful and entertaining with their antics but I understand they are being phased out thanks to those silly EU people. (Maybe we'll get them unbanned after brexit?).

I'm housebound so I can't go shopping for them and I'll need to be able to mail order them safely.

Any advice would be gratefully received!

just to confirm - I am in the UK.

I wouldn't add anything else to such a tiny tank, not even snails as the bioload from what you have is way too much. The tank is too small for fish at all to be honest and on top of that, the CAE you have will grow to almost a foot long and become very aggressive as it matures. It may well kill the danios. Danios need a minimum of a 3ft long tank and the CAE needs 4ft. The CAE is also a tropical fish not cold water, so unless the room temperature is always above 22c, its health will be compromised by living in cold water.

Thanks for that. I appreciate the advice.

I have heard these things before and although it all seems very sensible, all I can do is report the history of my tank. I was given it in 2009 and put in 2 minnows, 2 danios and the CGAE (which I now know is regarded as too many). I still have 3 of the original fish and the CGAE doesn't seem to bully the other fish and keeps pretty much to itself, usually near the tank bottom. It doesn't seem to have grown particularly. I wonder if it's actually a CGAE?

The temperature is usually around 19 degrees and rarely goes to an upper or lower extreme. What I would say though, although I know the biorb has a bad press, its bio filtering is very good.