I am the founder of Shrimp Aquatics and a freshwater aquarist with 4 years of hands-on experience keeping and breeding ornamental shrimp, fish, and invertebrates. Based in Ho Chi Minh City, one of the world's leading hubs for aquatic livestock, I test every care guide in my own fish room before publishing.
Care-guide methodology: husbandry advice is checked against observations from our own tanks where applicable, while species and water-parameter claims are reviewed against cited sources. Read our Content Policy.
Choose by your water: a rabbit snail (Tylomelania sp.) needs a mature, warm, alkaline Sulawesi tank, while a ramshorn fits the ordinary community tank most keepers already run. Ramshorns also breed far faster, and the snail that strips plants is…
Yes. Rabbit snails (Tylomelania spp.) are freshwater snails, and strictly so: the genus is endemic to Sulawesi, Indonesia, where it lives in lakes, rivers and streams.[[1]] The catch is which freshwater. They need warm, alkaline, mineral-rich water, and that’s what…
No. We wouldn’t put a Sulawesi rabbit snail (Tylomelania sp.) in with any cichlid. Keepers and care sites routinely list cichlids among the fish to keep away from these snails. No study has tested the two in one aquarium, so…
The best substrate for rabbit snails (Tylomelania sp.) is a fine, smooth, inert sand, with rock on top for them to graze. Treat it as the choice that suits every kind of rabbit snail. What matters more than the grain…
Yes. A rabbit snail’s shell grows with it for its whole life. The snail never sheds or swaps it; it keeps adding new shell at the opening as its body gets bigger.[[1]] How fast that happens hasn’t been measured for…
The best tankmates for a rabbit snail are Sulawesi shrimp and other rabbit snails, because both want the same 79-86°F (26-30°C), pH 7.5-8.5 water. The fish that usually fill top ten lists each miss at least one of the snail’s…
Choose a nerite if you want a small algae grazer for an ordinary tropical tank, and choose a rabbit snail only if you already run a warm, alkaline Sulawesi tank with a film growing on the rock. They’re different animals…
Some keepers do keep a betta with rabbit snails, but it’s a poor match and we wouldn’t plan a tank around it. Warmth is the only thing the two agree on: a rabbit snail (Tylomelania sp.) needs alkaline, mineral-rich water,…
No, rabbit snails aren’t aggressive. Sulawesi rabbit snails (Tylomelania sp.) are slow grazers that spend their time scraping the film of algae and microbes off rock, wood and glass, and they don’t chase, bite or corner fish, shrimp or other…
Yes, rabbit snails (Tylomelania) can climb out of a tank. They crawl up aquarium glass like any other snail, and most rabbit snail care guides tell you to keep a lid on for exactly that reason. Treat what follows as…
Often longer than it looks: keepers pass around 12 to 14 hours, and a snail that looks dead after a night on the floor can still recover. No published study has measured how long a rabbit snail (Tylomelania sp.) survives…
Plan on a year or more. Keepers report rabbit snails reaching breeding size at around a year old, and full size in the larger species comes after that. No published study has timed how long any rabbit snail (Tylomelania) takes…
