Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Anything wrong with adding snails?

Trapdoor snails, any algea eating fresh water snails? I see a lot of them for sail on ebay and aquarium sites and I have a huge algae issue twice a year. Would there be anything wrong with adding them to the pond for the food chain and algae?

I'd also like to add fresh water clams if they'd do well. I'm in Southeast Texas.

The level of benefits obtained from adding snails and/or clams may be negligible.

Snails only consume attached algae which is normally not an issue. They have no effect on suspended algae. Clams are filter-feeders and as such help with water quality, but it would require a large population to affect any noticeable results, depending on pond size.

Do some research on Tilapia and Grass Carp they work great for me.

I would advise against adding snails to a pond. Snails are an intermediate host for several fish parasites. If you eliminate the snail population in a pond you eliminate the life cycle of such parasites. I personally would never add snails to a pond. If you are that concerned about algae, rake it out, it would be more effective.

Give Todd Overton of Overton's Fisheries a call. He can hook you up on some Tilapia that will solve any algae issue you have and is nearby in Buffalo Tx.

please dont add snails, they will most likely show up in your pond all on their own, but make them work for it. have you thought about fresh water shrimp?? There is interesting info on the site about them.

I have tried to add Blackhorn snails twice but they never took. I also added 5 gals of clams but they never took for some reason either. However I do have lots of the small pond snails that do show up on their own and they do their small part eating algae. I'm just guessing but it would seem to me that if you are far enough south in east Texas that Tilapia would survive year round. I was stationed in southern Oklahoma and we had snow there.

Don't add snails. Some species of snails are primary hosts for parasites of fish, especially grubs.

If you want to add snails I would do my research. I would pick a species that is small enough to be consumed even in its largest adult sizes, has a thin shell which can be easily cracked by redears, cats, or crayfish or whatever, and make sure that you have a species in the pond that will eat them regularly to keep the population under control.

In any of the ponds that I'm taking care of, I go with Bob's suggestion, for his exact same reasons.