excess feeding only cause of snail pop explosion?

SnakeIce

SnakeIce

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May 4, 2002
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North Ga, USA
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Frederick
this has puzzled me for a while.... I do not wish to discredit those that say feeding (the fish) to much pluss snails is asking for a population explosion.

but I question that being the only reason for it.

I have two tanks, one my 20 gallon is nicely planted, is what I consider just over max stocked, has a few malaysian snails and a few baby rams horns, my sargent major loach keeps things in check, but I had a snail die off recently no reason known.

the other tank, the 55 is well under max stocked, fed sporaticly and maybe a flake or two hits the bottom but doesn't sit there for long as the fish find it and eat it.

so by the feeding theory the 55 should have only a few more snails than the 20 as far as density goes since there is no fish that controlls them in the 55.

but the 55 is over run by snails, there isn't a peice of gravel with out a snail on it or on one adjacent to it.


I don't know if I just missed this about what was said about what is considered 'FEEDING' but the 55 has more watts per gallon and way fewer live plants than the 20 gallon does... consequently there is alot more algae in the 55 than I ever get in my 20.

I submit that the light is feeding the snails and not what I am feeding the fish. that and the fact that my tap water has 10 ppm nitrate in it.


I also think some snails can lay enough eggs on plants befor you buy them to make it seem like you are being over run by snail reproduction, and you can pull out hundreds weekly for months befor you run out of the introduced population of snails.


any comments on this as far as possibly frustrating someone if a snail overpopulation is blaimed solely on over (fish) feeding?
 
Does your 55 gallon have a lot of algae?

That is what the snails are eating.
 
no with the current population of snails little algae is left,
So if I just post something like

GAH 55 gallon tank overrun by snails

with out the light information I have seen many posts such as that answered with your feeding to much... when theoreticly with my setup I could have no fish, do waterchanges, add no food and still have algae and snails.


I understand some of you might see the conection to more of anything a snail will eat and population growth, but what is said led me to believe they were blaiming all overpopulations with overfeeding the fish type food.


the problem with my 55 could be viewed as to many snails. given the amount I am feeding them algae must be the source of thier food, but now that the population is so high hardly any algae exists in the tank(still more than my 20) but I don't expect less algae with no plants and more light.

so my actuall solution for the problem of to many snails would be to lessen the light on the tank or get more growth from the plants.

so i could actually ignore the snails and fix the real imbalance with the tank and the snails will take care of themselves. might be a year to see a turnaround on the snail population but it would happen all by itself. with the current set up the snail population is balanced with the algae growth, so if I remove snails I get more algea.


here is my beef. so many posts about snails get answered like the snails are the problem when they are just a symptom.

reefers have to learn patience to have a balanced tank that is self sufficient other than small routine things. plants do grow faster than anything in the reef setup so things are abit faster, but still a balance is still slow to achieve.
 
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But the commonest cause of too much algae is overfeeding (leading to excess nutrients), so in the majority of the cases of snail overpopulation it is still the issue. Even if algae is the direct cause it can and frequently is secondary to too much food. Whether the snails increase from excess food directly or a bumper crop of soft algae is trivial, when excess food is most often the ultimate cause.

You really would be hard pressed to get a valid comparison between a tank with a snail predator and one without.
 
oh ok, man did I have the both eyes looking through the keyhole syndrome on that one. I was viewing overfeeding as an extreme over feeding situation where there is uneaten food laying around.

hmm I guess my interest in reproduction of fish is abit counter productive when it comes to controlling snails because of the constantly well fed state of the fish.

so would more water changes work for reduceing the nutrients in the tank? I assume I would have to have more than the 10 ppm nitrate in the tank for that to make any difference though.

I wonder how much more nitrate there has to be for it to be worth the reduction of that nutrient for the introduction of the other traces that are in the tap water to be balanced out. Obviously I am not going to do less waterchanges than I am just to control the available nutrients for the algae.
 
More water changes, or larger ones, work well for me - they are very much a 'reset' button for nutrients. Nitrate at 10 ppm should be okay, it actually helps me in some tanks (my water had 0 from the tap, utility added another source, we now get 10ppm - I no longer have to add nitrate for the higher-light tanks), but depending on your planting level and lighting, you may not be able to hold that low in the tanks between partials.
 
Also don't forget that most snails are really good at hiding, especially in gravel. What may appear to be a small population to you may in fact be a hiding large population. And snails eat biofilm and fish poop as well, so the amount of flakes isn't the only concern. A good gravel vacuuming every week will certainly slow down the snail population explosion.
 
Another food source for snails in planted tanks is rotting plant matter--dropped leaves the go unnoticed but feed snails easily. But, I agree with RTR, having a snail predator in a tank completely invalidates a comparison between feeding options.
 
yes I realize the snail population can't be compaired,

any way I look at it the two tanks can't be compaired, but they both are a realatively balanced system.

the 55 has actually less algae atm than the 20 because of all the snails where as the 20 has plants and that snail eating fish useing the nutrients in the end instead of the snails like in the 55
 
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