Q: What exactly should I feed my apple snail? I place romaine lettuce at the bottom. Is that good enough?
A: From my own experience, the apple snails are not difficult when it comes to food.
Personally I feed them fish-food (food for pond fish, it comes in a big box, consist of big pellets and is inexpensive), cucumber and lettuce.
Apple snails consume a lot of aquatic plants and algae.
In the literature I found an article described how the snails stopped reproducing when they where put on a diet, which consisted solely of water hyacinths. They didn't describe if it was the kind of food, or the fact that they could only eat one type of food that caused it. 
Maybe it might be a good idea to have some variation in their diet.

Q: Do Apple Snails eat aquarium plants?
A: Yes and no. Sick and weak plants have a high chance to become eaten by the apple snails. But when the snail have enough other food (vegetables and fishfood), they will probably prefer that to your nice collection of plants.

Q: Are apple snails hermaphrodite?
A: NO, apple snails are not hermaphrodite. Which means you'll need a male and a female to get baby snails.

Q: How can I see if a have a male or a female apple snail?
A: It is impossible to recognise the sex of an apple snail on the outside of their body. So you'll have to kill the animal to find out.
A better way is to wait till they copulate. When they're mating, the male snail creeps on the shell of the female and puts his penis in her.

Q: I'm planning to buy a couple of apple snails. How to control the snails once they start reproducing?
A: The snail lays her eggs above the waterline. The eggs can be easily recognised (look at the pictures on this site) and if you remove them regularly, you won't have a problem at all.

Q: My apple snail keeps growing. How big can I expect them to get?
A: When the conditions are good, the apple snail can get as big as 15 cm/6 inch diameter. To get your snails that big you have to feed them regularly and keep up the temperature above 20°C

Q: I bought a beautiful yellow apple snail 2 months ago. Now the new part of its shell is growing in a lighter colour and it seems to me that it's also more irregular. What could be the cause?
A: It is because they have stopped growing for some time (transport to the shop, lack of food, other water quality) and when the animal start growing again (thanks to your good care) it's unable to make the same quality of shell as it was before. When you get young snails, hatched in your own tank, you'll see that they get the right colour and that they grow very smooth.

Q: One of my snails has lost a tentacle. Will it grow back?
A: Yes, maybe it won't get as long as it was before, but snails have a remarkably ability to repair their body.

Q: Are there sorts of fish I have to look out for that could eat my snails?
I have notest that some species try to eat there tentacles.
A: I encountered the same problem. And it seems that almost all fish at least try once in a while to eat the tentacles. In my own tanks the snails lost pieces of their tentacles, but after they grow back, the fish didn't bother the snails anymore.
But I can imagine that some fish will keep considering the snails as a nice piece of food.

Q: How well can an apple snail tolerate cichlid salt?
A: Apple snails tolerate little amounts of salt if you slowly build up the concentration. Be sure that the salt is dissolved before you put it in the tank so that the snail won't get in contact with the pure stuff.
If you see that the snails stay in their shell for more than a day, then  lower the salt concentration.

Q: Are apple snails a intermediate host for (fish) parasites?
A: I don't know if there are fish parasites who have have snails as intermediate host, but there are several non-fish parasites who have the the apple snail as intermediate host.
The parasite Angiostrongylus cantonensis, a nematode parasite, also know as the rat lung worm, has the apple snail as an intermediate host. This parasite causes eosinophilic meningonencephalitis in humans, resulting in severe neurological disorders and even death.
But don't worry if you got your snail from a pet shop. The only way the snail can be infected is by living in water were infected rats or mice live. And even then, you have to eat the snail or your waterplants (on wich the parasites attach themselves after finishing their life-cyclus in the snails and wait there for being eaten by there main-host).
If you suspect your snail from being infected, just keep them away from their main host. By that way, you can break the life cyclus of the parasite, and you will get lost of them. Beware that it can take a long time, because many parasites are able to have several generations in their intermediate host. Best thing you can do is wait until the snail have laid their eggs and go on with the young, uninfected snails.

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