hitchhiker snail ID

[cellodaisy]

I tried looking for snail ID information online and became quickly overwhelmed. These are probably something really common. They hitchhiked in on some plants from a biology supply company. There are three (that I have found so far) and they are all tiny. This is the largest one, barely larger than a sesame seed.



I wasn't planning on having snails in my tank. What are these? If I don't want to keep them, what the heck should I do with them?

Thanks!

 

[crimsonmoon]

if you don't want to keep them...too late! lol. once you have them they are next to impossible to get rid of. they are very quick at the baby making.
a lot of people call them pond snails, or bladder snails. for most people though, they just fall under the category "pest snail"

 

[cellodaisy]

They're not in my tank. I inspected the plants before I put them in QT and pulled these little guys off. They're in their own plastic tub at the moment. I could have missed some, though. There definitely aren't any in my main tank, though, so maybe I have a chance to get rid of them? Will they eat my plants?

 

[msjinkzd]

I would dip the plants in potassium permanganate before adding ot your tank to rid the plants of eggs.

 

[pik01]

it's a common pouch snail You can remove the 3 but there are most likely more you can't see. Very tough to be 100% rid of them but they won't hurt anything and if you don't overfeed they won't have a population explosion.

edit: jeez I go and look at an article to make sure it's a pouch/bladder and not a pond snail for 5 minutes and there are already 3 responses lol

 

[crimsonmoon]

^^both good advice, you probably have a hundred little eggs on your plants lol

 

[cellodaisy]

I did find (and wipe off) a few globs of clear goo on the plants. Would those have been the eggs? Are there alternatives to potassium permanganate? If not, where would I get it?

Thank you all so much for your help!

 

[pik01]

you can also use a 1:20 solution of bleach:water. I bought my potassium permanganate off of amazon.com. Here's a link to some instructions on cleaning plants. It's the second to last section at the bottom of the page. Ornament and Plant Cleaning

 

[cellodaisy]

Hmm... been reading up and it sounds like they would do bad things to my plants. Is that the case?

 

[pik01]

depends what plants, some of the more sensitive plants might melt. I've used a KMNo3 wash on sunset hygro, java moss, rotala, dwarf sag, java fern, guppy grass, anacharis, and a few other plants with no problems. What plants do you have?