rm
Passport
- Family
- Snails
- Grows to
- 12 cm (4.7")
- Lives
- 3–5 years
- Temperament
- Peaceful
- Care
- Beginner
- Swims
- On the bottom
- Keep
- One is fine
- Water
- 26–30 °C (79–86 °F)
Indonesia
Care requirements
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On record for Rabbit Snail: adult size, lifespan, minimum tank, temperature, ph, hardness, carbonate hardness, minimum group, diet, care level, swim level.
Not on record for Rabbit Snail: tank length.
A figure that is not on record is left out rather than guessed. One marked Suggested comes from keeping knowledge rather than a page.
- Minimum tank 38 L / 10.0 US gal
- pH 7.3–8.5
- Hardness 4–12 dGH
- Carbonate hardness 2–15 dKH
- Diet algae eater/omnivore
Care notes written from general aquarium knowledge, not from the cited sources.
About
Rabbit snails have faces. The head is long, wrinkled and drooping, with tentacles that genuinely do suggest a rabbit's ears, and the animal moves with a slow deliberation that makes it feel more like a pet than a clean-up crew.
They come from the ancient lakes of Sulawesi, the same water that produces the cardinal shrimp, and they carry a long spiralled shell over a body that can be yellow, orange, white or near-black depending on the variety.
They're slow at everything. Slow-moving, slow-growing, and slow to reproduce — a rabbit snail colony grows at a pace that will never trouble you, which is the opposite problem from most snails in this catalogue.
Tank setup
Keep your rabbit snails warm and keep the water hard and alkaline. Their lakes are mineral-rich and well above neutral, and this is one of the few snails where soft acidic water is genuinely unsuitable rather than merely unhelpful.
Give them sand. They plough through it looking for food and a coarse substrate makes that harder, though they'll manage on fine gravel.
Provide a lot of surface: rock, wood, and plenty of area for biofilm and algae to develop. They graze constantly and a large snail takes a lot of grazing.
Keep the tank mature and stable. They're sensitive to swings and they're expensive enough that losses hurt.
Feeding
Rabbit snails graze algae and biofilm and eat decaying plant matter, but a tank almost never grows enough for them.
Feed them directly and generously. Blanched courgette, spinach, kale, sinking algae wafers and calcium-rich snail foods all work, and they'll settle on a piece of vegetable for hours.
Give them a calcium source. Cuttlebone or a mineral block keeps the shell growing properly on an animal this large.
Avoid: copper in anything, and avoid assuming they'll find enough on their own. Underfeeding is the common failure with this species.
Filtration and flow
Gentle to moderate flow. They're heavy and slow and they don't need current.
Keep hardness and alkalinity up deliberately. This is the single most important thing about their water, and it's the opposite of what most planted-tank keepers aim for.
Guard intakes only for the smallest juveniles; adults are far too large to be at risk.
With plants
Rabbit snails are the one snail here you should be careful with. They will eat soft aquatic plants — java fern and anubias are safe, but delicate stems, and dwarf lilies in particular, are at real risk.
Keep them with tough, leathery plants attached to hardscape. That combination works well and suits the hard alkaline water they need anyway.
They're heavy enough to crush fine carpeting plants simply by crossing them.
Health
Shell erosion is the main problem and it's a direct read on your water. Soft or acidic conditions pit and thin the shell, and on a snail this long-lived the damage accumulates.
They retract deeply and stay put for long periods, which alarms new keepers. A snail that hasn't moved for a day is usually fine; use smell to check rather than assuming.
They're sensitive to copper and to rapid chemistry changes. Acclimatise them over hours.
Breeding
Rabbit snails breed remarkably slowly, and that's their great advantage over every other snail here. They have separate sexes and they give birth to live young.
A female produces a single large offspring at a time, encased in a white capsule she deposits on the substrate. One baby, occasionally two — not a clutch of dozens.
The young are miniature adults and grow slowly. A colony takes years rather than weeks to build, so there is no realistic prospect of them overrunning a tank.
Tank mates
Avoid9
- Clown Loach Clown Loach is not safe with Rabbit Snail: loaches and botia and snails are a bad pairing.
- Demasoni Cichlid Demasoni Cichlid is not safe with Rabbit Snail: african cichlids and snails are a bad pairing.
- Dwarf Chain Loach Dwarf Chain Loach is not safe with Rabbit Snail: loaches and botia and snails are a bad pairing.
- Electric Yellow Lab Electric Yellow Lab is not safe with Rabbit Snail: african cichlids and snails are a bad pairing.
- Hillstream Loach Hillstream Loach is not safe with Rabbit Snail: loaches and botia and snails are a bad pairing.
Only with care13
- Chinese Algae Eater Chinese Algae Eater is aggressive and Rabbit Snail is peaceful.
- Convict Cichlid Convict Cichlid is aggressive and Rabbit Snail is peaceful.
- Jewel Cichlid Jewel Cichlid is aggressive and Rabbit Snail is peaceful.
- Bristlenose Pleco Bristlenose Pleco is a risk to Rabbit Snail: bristlenose catfish and snails are a pairing to watch.
- Clown Pleco Clown Pleco is a risk to Rabbit Snail: bristlenose catfish and snails are a pairing to watch.
No conflict is recorded with the other 82 species in the database, so nothing to flag. 4 species are not covered at all, so they could not be judged either way.