snails

[crkinney]

A while back I mentioned that I had what looked like brown rice all over my tank.They turned out to be a type of conical snail .the are taking over my tank .
Yesterday I removed all my fish and drained the than ,removed all the artifical plants and other stuff .I soaked all the stuff that was in the tank in a strong bleach and water solution while cleaning the tank with bleach.After complete rinsing and multiable flushes of the tank and filteration system I tested the tank and added back a small number of fish ,putting the rest in my outside tank.
This morning I found about thirty snails in the tank???
now I am snail picking .
If I treat the tank with ick med [supose to kill invertabrates ] do you think this will rid me of this problem.
any sugestions are wellcome

[MatsP]

It is generally bad to poison the snails, because that will just lead to bad water quality, which may solve the immediately "snails look ugly" problem, but may kill your fish.

The best thing would be a combination approach:
1. Reduce feeding - which leads to less food for the snails. Most people feed their fish too much anyway.
2. Mechanical eradication - either by hand, or get some fish that likes to eat snails (and that is compatible with the rest of your tank inhabitants). If you feed less, the fish are also more likely to eat the baby snails before they get big and have a really hard shell.

You probably won't get rid of ALL these snails. But it should keep them at manageable levels.

By the way, your snails, by the sound of things, are "Malaysian trumpet snails", a.k.a MTS. [Not Multple Tank Syndrome].

--
Mats

[CanadaPleco]

MTS snails are quite helpful to the tank usually. As Mats said reduce your feeds some and they will not multiply as fast. Bleech will not kill them either, at least not all of them. Assassin snails help to kill them and they reproduce much slower then MTS's do and look prettier as well.

[crkinney]

I still have no Idea how they got in my tank the last thing added was a couple of oto's from a shop that was closing.The water was clear and clean when they were introduced.
It puzzles me.

[MatsP]

I'm not sure where mine came from either. But the thing is that if you only have one or two, and they are fairly small, you probably won't notice them. When you have a few large ones, you will see them from time to time. When you have LOTS, they are easy to spot.

What I'm trying to say, you could have had them in your system for quite some time, and only noticed a little while back.

When I spotted the first one in my tank, I hadn't added anything to that tank for a couple of months...

--
Mats

[sidguppy]

The Assassin snails definitely live up to their reputation!

a while ago, Marc upscaled one of his tanks and we had to empty that tank, including taking out the sand
he had a bunch of Assassin snails in there, but wanted to get rid of em, because next to eating the MTS they also ate all the Tatia eggs.

I took the Assassins with me and dumped them in my quarantaine tank wich held a snail fest; ramshorns, pondsnails, MTS, loads.

the Assassin Snails eradicated all the other snails in that tank in less than a month!

so if you don't want to breed fish in your tank, but just keep them, and you want to get rid of the MTS without using chemicals, they are a very good and effective solution.

[crkinney]

I havefound a way to catch the little buggers .From an outside tank I found a half of a terracotta sewer tile that was covered with alge .After a good rinse I put it in the tank .The snail flock to it It is the only food in the tank for them after the cleaning .I simply remove it three or four times a day and pick of the snails at a rate of about sixty per day. They just keep coming and I keep picking
Right now I have oto's and flag fish breeding in that tank .When they are done breeding I will reintorduce the hoplo's to eat the rest.
My three hoplo's are in an outside tank until I return from my next work assignment in november.

[PeterUK]

Why all the fuss ?
I bought 60 Malaysian trumpet snails to introduce to one of my tanks, fed them up for several months and then moved handfuls around to the other tanks.
Whenever I set up a new tank I ALWAYS introduce a dozen or so snails to it for several reasons.

1) Snails are a very very good indicator of water quality, basically they are water barometers.
2) Snails and MTS's in particular are very good at turning the substrate over and therefore reduce any gas build ups especially if you use sand (as I do) I also use horsefaced loaches for the same purpose in my larger cichlid tanks where the snails dont last that long.
3) Snails are the clean up crew and can get to places where the fish cant reach to eat any uneaten food.
4) There must be other reasons but cant think of any right now

[MatsP]

Absolutely, moderate numbers of snails isn't a problem. Huge amounts of them can be a problem in tanks where there are plecos, as they tend to go for the pleco food... But small numbers of snails do good in the tank.

--
Mats

[andywoolloo]

agreed Peter.

I introduce MTS into all my tanks, I use sand substrate. They propagate and I spread them around. They reproduce too much I cut down food, or hand remove them.

Great little things.

Altho, I know some people have an aversion to snails.

[sidguppy]

I used to be annoyed by trumpetsnails
these days I can't get enough.....

my fish eat snails by the bucket! at one time I tossed in 2 full hands of trumpetsnails in my showtank. someone said "there goes the tank"; but in a mere 24 hours all were killed and eaten
I was just feeding the fish

unfortunately I cannot recommend Paretroplus spp as a remedy for snails
they get huge, they're shoalers who tend to get very agressive to speciesmembers when kept with too few, they see all plants as an extra foodsource, they dig all the time and they're collectively suffering from ADHD

[crkinney]

I am weeding out the population .So far I have removed about 1000 and am in no danger of running out.
When I return from my work assignment I will reintroduce my three hoplo's and they can control the population.
Three days ago I put a piece of cucumber in the tank for the oto's and in ten min. it was covered with snails,when the sun goes down and the lites are out the tank walls were covered with snails I just had too many. This was after a complete tank cleaning. note: I have a river rock base about 3/8in. in size. It was removed and washed with everthing else.They are a hardy breedand hide well.

[Hansen]

I agree with the people praising the assasin or killer snail (Anetome helena). They eradicated my snail infestation, and they are easy to remove when there are too many because of their size and slow reproduction rate. And they are quite pretty too (IMO). Furthermore, they also act as a "bottom clean up crew".

[crkinney]

I have not been able to find assasin snails locally.But I have put a dent in the population .I have acumulated 1 1/2 inchs of snail in a five gallon bucket they were distrubuted between my two out side ponds .Not too many left for now.They breed like rabbits.