How Often To Feed Mystery Snails? And How Much? Explained

Mystery snails are pretty active, when it comes to feeding. They help in keeping the water clean for your fish, but knowing how often to feed mystery snails is also essential.

Feed your mystery snails every day or two with one to two tablespoons of either fish food or fresh vegetables. Some factors contributing to how much you should feed your mystery snails include how many of them you have in your tank and their size.

It will take careful observation and adjustment to determine how much your specific mystery snails need to eat.

To avoid making your mystery snails overweight or underweight, read on till the end for the mystery snail feeding guide.

How Much To Feed Mystery Snails?

The more mystery snails you have in your tank, the more food you’ll need to ensure everyone gets enough. 

As a general rule, start with one to two tablespoons of fish food daily or a couple of small servings of calcium-rich vegetables. You’ll then want to check for remaining food after a day, then adjust accordingly. 

Mystery snails eat more than just food, so you’ll want to account for what you have in your aquarium before determining what to feed your mystery snails. 

These snails like to chew on plants, nibble on algae, and eat biofilm or wafers. They’ll also eat up any remnants of fish food or scavenge for crumbs. 

Smaller mystery snails usually eat less than their larger counterparts. Also, Mystery snails slow down once winter comes, so they don’t eat as much as they normally would. 

How Do You Know You Are Feeding The Mystery Snail Enough?

If your mystery snails are hungry and there’s no fish food, or vegetables, they will go after any dead matter, algae, waste, or biofilm they can find. If they are still hungry, they’ll eat live plants too. 

If you notice that your mystery snails are constantly scooting around frantically or are starting to eat your live plants, there’s a good chance they aren’t being fed enough. 

Even though these snails like to scavenge for food and are very good at it, it doesn’t mean they don’t need to be fed. It’s very unlikely your mystery snail will find enough food to eat on its own.

If they know they are getting fed, they will only scavenge if they’re still hungry or find something extra enticing. 

A small piece of an algae wafer, one to two tablespoons of fish food, or a tablespoon or two’s worth of vegetables should be good for at least a day if not two days.

Can You Overfeed Your Mystery Snails?

It’s easy to overfeed mystery snails, which can make it challenging to learn how much and how often to feed your mystery snails. Once they smell food, they will go toward it and eat it up. 

They also appreciate foods with calcium and will gravitate towards calcium-rich foods more than anything. This is an important mineral for mystery snails, as it maintains their shell’s hardness. 

Once you spend a few days looking at how much your mystery snails eat based on recommended amounts, you can adjust accordingly. 

Stick with the same amount and monitor how your mystery snails are behaving. You’ll be able to tell that they’re eating too much quickly. 

The benefit of having these snails in an aquarium can also be what makes overfeeding them a possibility. 

These scavengers eat leftover food, algae buildup, and dead matter, including dead plants or fish. This helps keep the water clean for all other aquatic life in the tank. While this makes it easy to avoid underfeeding them, it can be hard to avoid overfeeding. 

Therefore, the importance of monitoring your snails the first few days or weeks after you bring them home can’t be overstated – to avoid having them eat too much or too little. 

Can Mystery Snails Get Overweight?

Mystery snails can become overweight, and you’ll be able to detect their gaining excess weight fairly easily. Mystery snails can travel in and out of their shell, and an overweight snail will struggle to get themselves back in their shell. Their movement will also get slower as they continue to gain weight. 

An overweight snail will also produce much more waste than they typically do. So to keep your aquarium parameters perfect, you’ll have to clean your tank more often. Thus, it’s best to stick with recommended feeding amounts based on how many mystery snails you have, even if they eat their food more quickly than expected. 

Dos And Don’ts Of Feeding Mystery Snails

• Do incorporate vegetables like spinach and other greens, cucumber, carrots, and green beans. Be sure to blanch them and cut them up into small portions.
• Do feed your mystery snails some algae wafers or tropical tablets from time to time to ensure they get adequate nutrients to stay healthy.
• Don’t use fish foods with copper: Copper and copper sulfate are often found in cheap fish food, which can be toxic for your fish and snails. 
• Don’t overfeed your mystery snails; it takes time to learn exactly how much food your mystery snails need, but they will scavenge if still hungry.
• Don’t feed mystery snails any processed or cooked food.

Final Thoughts 

Knowing how often to feed mystery snails or how much to feed them can be challenging at first. Typically, once a day is enough. However, if it seems like they are eating too much, you can try feeding them every other day to see if it helps. Despite how tricky it can be to learn their feeding needs, mystery snails greatly benefit every aquarium. 

Recommended Further Reading:

• Did you ever thought of keeping mystery snails with betta fish? Then before finalizing your decision I highly recommend checking out this information guide: Mystery Snails and Betta: Can they live together?