Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations High snail population

RES have pharyngeal "teeth" at the back of their throats to enable them to crush shells.

I suspect your RES just aren't quite big enough to crush snail shells yet.

Small snail shells are almost as tough to crack as larger snail shells. However, the crushing force of small RES has to be significantly less than larger RES that have 10x the muscle mass.

Based on simple physics, I bet there is a "critical mass" for RES to reach before they can easily crush snail shells. Once they reach that size, I suspect they will quickly deplete your population of tasty snails.

(All of the above is rank speculation on my part. However, I bet someone that has access to the academic journals could readily find some actual research results on that topic.)