Do you ALWAYS have to say a remembering mantra?

I only remember my dreams if I tell myself to.

The tutorials say "Once you can remember x amount of dreams per night, you can try induction techniques."

Does this mean you need to be able to remember your dreams without thinking "I will remember my dream tonight"?

In my own experience - and everyone is different - I found that when I assumed that remembering dreams had become a habit the result was a dip in recall and I had to go back to mantras to bring recall back up.

dream recall mantra?? if it helps you sure - use it, but it's not necessary in my opinion and few here actually do. mantra or no mantra if you can remember 1-2 dreams per night you'll be fine.

It depends, if it helps you, just continue using them, that is a form of MILD anyway, so you could use the mantras for recall and to aid DILD.