question about potassium permanganate for ridding plants of snails/eggs

[kimmisc]

Would http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=14440&Nty=1&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntk=All&pc=1&N=0&Ntt=potassium%20permanganate&Np=1 be effective as a dip for ridding plants of all snails and eggs? Articles say to use potassium permanganate for this, but in this product's description, it says "may be harmful to snails." Will be harmful to snails is what I'm looking for. :)

[rich311k]

That is the stuff. It will do the job, just be forewarned it doesn't always get all the snails. Those little guys can be tough.

[kimmisc]

I'm thinking of using a QT tank and doing the treatment for longer than a dip.

Will this stuff make a tank uninhabitable by inverts forever the way copper does?

[kimmisc]

If anyone has any tips on this, I'd love to hear them. I got a new 30g for Christmas, and I'm going to try using the extra space to get rid of my pest snails by doing some clever moving things around, treating plants, and leaving 1 tank baron at a time, hopefully starving off the unwanted snails in each tank. I do have some shrimp and mystery snails, so I can't go with the "snail rid" or copper treatments, and prefer not to make any tanks permanently deadly to inverts.

I do have a 5g hex I wouldn't mind being invert free forever, so if copper treatment on plants is the only sure way, I could do that..
If the potassium perma isn't good enough, the copper route will mean throwing away my driftwood though. I'm pretty sure wood would soak up way too much copper. Or... the wood could be bleached... hmmm.

[CBWMN]

Go buy a dwarf puffer for the 5g. Initially put the plants in there for awhile. D{'s actually NEED snails in their diet.

[jones57742]

leaving 1 tank baron at a time, hopefully starving off the unwanted snails in each tank.

IMHO if the bearen tanks have anything in them except for glass and water this will not work.

These are very, very pesky little devils!


I do have some shrimp and mystery snails, so I can't go with the "snail rid" or copper treatments, and prefer not to make any tanks permanently deadly to inverts.

This comment may just be me but please do not put this "snail rid" or copper in your tanks. Chemical additives "in my brain" are "no good"!

In a previous post you referred to potassium permanganate.
Please do not use this as it is very, very nasty stuff!
(As an indication when combined with water a very, very endothermic reaction will occur [ie. the vessel will get very cold]).
If you get some of this on you washing with soap will not help to remove the purple stain.
The dead cells on the surface of your skin as well the ultimate migration of the 5th layer of the epidermis to dead cells at the surface will "have to wear off".
Unfortunately this is not the "end of the story" as subcutaneous tissue may have been infected due to the potassium permanganate and a "red area" which was larger than the purple area will be present.
Do I need to go on here?

As I indicated earlier these snails are very "pesky little devils".
If you see five on the exterior glass there are probably 50 in the tank some of which are too small to observe and the other are under leaves, in caves, etc. where they cannot be observed.

This post is coming from an experience of a snail infestation which is virtually unbelievable.
I ordered plants and placed them in the tank when I had very, very little experience.

I observed a small one on the wall and "I guess that I thought 'no big deal'".
As best as I remember within a month I could hardly see into the tank due to the snails and their egg sacks and the snails were virtually solid on the plant leaves, rocks, wood, etc.

I believe that when I observed the first snail that manual control (ie. not eradication) would have been possible.

The moral to the story is the atomic bomb on the snails was seven yoyo loaches which were very small when they arrived.

A month later these loaches were several inches long and I had no visible snails.

(Please note that the snails have not been eradicated as most of the detritus which I vacuum from the bottom is snail shells although I do not observe any snails in my tank.)

Should you decide to go the "loach route" you will need to remove your mystery snails from the tank in which you have the loaches.

TR

[kimmisc]

In a tank with no plants, no light (to grow algae), and no food, hopefully given some type the snails would be gone. If not, I could bleach the tanks but I can't bleach all my plants. I've ruined a good many plants in the past with bleach dips. :( Some are so sensitive.

If not for the mystery snails, I probably wouldn't mind the other snails so much, but they cover my snail biscuits and usually I never see the mystery snails on them before they're all eaten up. It makes population control by food limitation impossible too. I feed mystery snails, pest snails multiply, and it's a cycle. And to think.... I specifically ORDERED red ramshorns because I wanted some snails in my tanks. If I'd only known what a pain they are..

[kimmisc]

Go buy a dwarf puffer for the 5g. Initially put the plants in there for awhile. D{'s actually NEED snails in their diet.

Then what would he do once I'm out of snails? I want them to be gone, not just slimmed down. I've never gone with snail eating fish for this reason, along with the fact they have different needs that I'm not sure I could meet.

[Gbbudd]

LOACHES LOACHES LOACHES THESE GUYS LOVE TO EAT SNAILS.