Hooray I have a snail?!

[adblair]

I have recently planted my daughters 15g. I knew that sometimes snails come on the plants, and after a couple of weeks I looked in the aquarium tonight and THERE WAS A SNAIL! He is pretty cute. Little iddy-biddy (like about as big around as a pencil eraser) fellow. He is round with a typical storybook snail shape and has a greenish color shell, but his body is sort of clear or translucent. Anyone know what kind he is?

I assume that snails are a good thing - at least that is what I have read on here. Now that I have one, do I need to do anything special for him?

Please don't tell me he is a bad snail. I already love him. :p

[~*LuvMyKribs*~]

Hehe oooohhhh you love him but will you love 1500 more??? lol

Those snails reproduce pretty fast. I had one or two come in on some plants and i thought whatever- those two little guys can't do much plant damage. WELL. Slowly over a few weeks more and more multiplied in the depths. They come out at night. Hardly ever seen. Until one time you turn the light on in the middle of the night and BAM! hundreds and hundreds of snails. AN INFESTATION! so i got a little tiny clown loach. problem solved. but clowns get big so 15 gal is maybe too small. I still have a few snails kicking around as loachy can't find all of them.

Snails are good at cleaning in the rocks and eating leftover food. They are kinda cool. Too many is too many though. ;)

:D

[adblair]

:eek: heehee... OK, so maybe I won't love all his brothers and sisters, but surely they won't take over, there's only so much food, and so much space. Snails are slow, they won't get much fish food, and I have ottos and SAE's, so they probably won't get a lot of algae either. Kind of a supply and demand thing - I hope!:)

[adblair]

Another thing.... I keep my light on AT NIGHT - it serves double duty as a nightlight. So, does this mean they will be out during the DAY when the room lights are on and there is sunlight (just a little) in the room?

[Godslayer]

It's important for fish to have a night cycle, just like you. Without it they will get grumpy and not be as healthy as they should, just like you. :) That said depending on what kind of snail it is you may have just the one or it may reproduce. I had a ramshorn as my only snail for over a year. The easiest way to control snail population is through feeding. Feed very little, you might even think it's not enough for your fish but it is. I only feed once a week and my fish are fine. Fish are cold-blooded jsut like reptiles, they only use about 15% of the fuel that warm-blooded animals, like us use.

[sunnygirl]

:argh i've got hundreds of ramshorns in my ten gallon, and they're ravaging my most prized plants. these little guys LOVE to eat alnost ANY plant. i found out that they live under the ugf, and the babies get blown into the upper tank through the lift tubes, because they can fit through the carbon cartriges. in a couple weeks you're probably going to hate that little guy, and i,m sure you wont be able to tell him apart from his babies. so sorry for you! :sad

[125gJoe]

I'm assuming you may have a HangOnBack type of filter for the tank.. If the filter stops working, open it up and check it for little snails jamming the impeller. They are usually not too bad of a problem though when it comes to this.

[adblair]

Yep... I've got a HOB filter, I will keep an eye on it. He hasn't been near my plants. He has just been hanging out on this artificial log that is in there. Hopefully he won't eat my plants. I'll keep my eye on him.:eeek:

[djlen]

Adblair, I've spent most of my adult life trying to keep the dang things out of my tanks. At this point I have 4 tanks and am completely, to my great joy, snail free(hope RTR isn't reading this).
Trust me, if you see one, you have dozens or at least will soon.

Hope you like them better than I do:) .

Len

[OrionGirl]

Snails are easily controlled by limiting the food available for them. While they will not eat healthy plants, they will eat failing leaves. So, make sure you prune any dead/dying leaves promptly, and make sure you are feeding appropriate amounts and types of food for the fish in the tank.

There are many, many fish that will eat snails and snail eggs--but adding any depends on how many and what fish you have in there already.

[adblair]

Well, IMO I already have too many fish in my tank, so I hate to think of adding more, especially since loaches get kind of big. Maybe that means I need a new tank. :D I keep looking for more of his snail buddies, but haven't found any yet. He is not concerned with the light being on or off. He just hangs out all day long. My SAE's have been picking on him though. Is that normal for them? Are they just protecting their algae supply? I do have one plant that I don't think is going to make it. Should I take it out? It's leaves are all crummy and falling off. It looks so bad I almost took it out last night, but I hate to stick my hand in there and disturb the fish.

[Starry]

Hi Angela!

Just a few things. People seem to be very divided on the snail issue. I've always had snails, andI just don't see how going to the trouble of getting rid of them is worth it. They don't bother me at all, but I have tons and tons of plants. Maybe if the tank is more bare it gets annoying. They don't damage plants (your type shouldn't, anyway). You should also note that it's extremely difficult to eradicate them once they're in. I wouldn't bother. And don't use snail-killing chemicals, they kill other things too.

If there's a dying plant, you should remove it. Unless it's a Crypt (Cyptocoryne species, they're brownish or dark green coloured rosette plants, you can search online for them). Crypts tend to lose all their leaves when you get them, but grow new ones soon. Other than that, it's probably not a good sign and leaving a dying plant can cause problems. It could also be that it's not a real aquatic plant, which is bad. Pet stores sell house plants in tanks because people buy them. Hopefully you didn't get one of those, it won't live.

Really, the reason I replied is to comment on the light. You should NOT leave it on 24/7, very bad for fish and plants. Try 12 hours on, 12 off if you really want it on a lot. But no more light than that. Hooking it up to a timer is easy, cheap and very convenient, I would recommend it. Just any old timer from a hardware store.

[adblair]

I do have my lights on a timer, but not the "normal people" schedule. Since it is really my daughter's aquarium, and she is at school all day, the timer is set to turn on after she comes home and stay on through the night hours so she can enjoy the fish and also the light makes a comforting nightlight. I'm not in her room much during the day (unless I am snail watching), and she does have a "light blocking" not a "light filtering" blind on her window (she likes to become nocturnal on weekends) so there isn't a LOT of light in there during the day.

The plant in question is definately not a crypt. It is tall and stemmy with medium pointy-ish leaves. It doesn't look like a house plant really, and if you take it out of water (even when it looked ok) it is limp, so I think it needs water and is a water plant. It came in a bunch of several stems with a few roots on each one and I planted them together, but they wouldn't stay tucked in the substrate and kept getting uprooted and tossed about the aquarium. I kept tucking them in, but now they are mostly single stems here and there because I didn't want to disturb the ones that were still planted when I replanted. They started sprouting roots like crazy out of their stalks right before they started to look bad. I don't know how I killed them. My other plants seem fine though.

I can't find the snail tonight. I'm afraid to take out the plant - what if he is on it and I don't see him? I don't want to kill him! :shake: I guess I will wait until tomorrow and try to find him first and THEN take out the plant and hope that I didn't dispose of any of his buddies.

[djlen]

If you mentioned it, I missed it. How much light does the tank have over it?
If it's a 15gal. and has a 15 watt bulb it's going to have a limited variety of plants that can grow in it.

Len

[RTR]

HA! I caught you Len! :p I looked at the thread at the beginning, but not again until today -when I could not imagine why it was still going. So I'll have to give my usual comments for the umpteenth time.

Common pond snails, MTS, and ramhorn snails do not eat heathly plants IME, but will consume unhealthy, dying plants. This is nor referring to Colombian Ramshorns - they are flat-spiraled Apple snails and do eat plants.

An excess of snails means there is an excess of food for them. If there is no excess of food, there will never be an excess of snails. They do live, grow, and multiply on water. None of my tanks has an excess of snails. Despite over a dozen planted tanks, I have to set extra tanks and intentionally overfeed to have snails to feed to puffers.

http://www.aaquaria.com/aquasource/snail.shtml

[TKOS]

I love having snails in my planted tanks (which is all of my tanks). Just another critter to look at and help keep things clean. I do water changes so I am not worried about them affecting my water quality.

As for yuor plants. Stem plants are often able to grow floating in the water. That is why they grow roots from all over. That is normal. I would guess you probably have water sprite, very common tank plant. And it is a very good plant to start with, IME. Often you can take mature leaves, cut them off and let them float in the water. this will gorw a whole new plant. They don't tend to have really great rooting systems and won't stay in shallow gravel very well.

[adblair]

Well... alrighty then.... I like my snail at least for now, so I plan to keep him around. If in the future he or 1500 of his friends become a problem, I'll package them up and ship them to RTR. hahaha


As for lighting... I am probably going to order a kit from AH supply, but I am going to have to research a little more on that because as I understand it you can't use the 2x13 kit with your standard hood. I have a lot of questions on what the alternatives would be, but I am sure I can find lots of help on here in old posts. If not I will post again.

THANKS SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR ADVICE!!

[Starry]

Originally posted by adblair
as I understand it you can't use the 2x13 kit with your standard hood.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. If it's a fluorescent hood, it will be fine. Not incandescent though.
I got the 2x13 kit and I'm using it in a Hagen hood (for 10 gal tank). Works like a charm, didn't even need to drill holes for air circulation. Make sure you have a glass cover under the lights though, and be careful cause the hood gets hot. Let your daughter know never to touch the hood.

[adblair]

giggle giggle..... I can see the eye rolling now if I tell my daughter to never touch the hood. She's in the early teen I know everything phase.....:D

I read that the bulbs couldn't be used with a "plastic" cover and I assumed that it meant that I couldn't use the old hood, just a glass cover of some sort. So I guess I just need to replace the clear plastic that goes directly beneath the bulbs where the light shines through?

Why do I make things harder than they have to be?:rolleyes: