How to Keep White Wizard Snail at Home
A pale, peaceful burrowing snail (Filopaludina) that sifts the substrate and eats detritus and leftover food without touching healthy plants. A gentle, plant-safe clean-up crew member.
The White Wizard snail (a pale Filopaludina) is the gentle housekeeper of the snail world - a peaceful burrower that ploughs through sand and fine gravel eating detritus, uneaten food and biofilm, while leaving healthy plants completely alone. Its ivory colour stands out against dark substrate, and unlike the plant-munching big ramshorns it's a genuinely plant-safe clean-up animal for a community or shrimp tank.
Why raise White Wizard snails
For quiet, plant-safe substrate cleaning.
- Plant-safe - eats detritus and leftovers, not your aquascape.
- Sifts the substrate, keeping the sand bed turned and clean.
- Peaceful and attractive, a pale contrast in a planted tank.
- Easy and undemanding.
The tank and setup
- A sand or fine-gravel bed to burrow and sift - the whole point of the animal.
- A mature planted or community tank with detritus to process.
- Standard gentle filtration.
Water and stability
Warm, stable, cycled water; copper is lethal to snails. Provide enough calcium/hardness for shell health - cuttlebone or a mineral supplement in soft water.
Feeding and daily care
Largely self-sufficient on detritus and leftovers; in a very clean tank supplement with sinking foods and blanched vegetable so it doesn't starve. It won't touch your plants either way.
Breeding and raising the young
Filopaludina are livebearers - they give birth to tiny fully-formed snails rather than laying egg clutches, and reproduce modestly in a well-fed tank without overrunning it. That controlled, no-egg-mass breeding is part of their appeal versus prolific egg-layers.
Common mistakes
- A bare-bottom or coarse-gravel tank - nothing to sift, an unhappy snail.
- Copper exposure.
- Soft water with no calcium - shell pitting.
- A spotless tank with no supplemental food - slow starvation.
Is White Wizard snail right for you
An excellent plant-safe clean-up snail for planted community and shrimp tanks with a sand bed. If you have a bare-bottom or hardscape-only tank, it has nothing to do - otherwise it's a quiet, useful, good-looking addition.