How not to lose critters, changing substrate, ???

L

LiveMermaid07

Bloody Mary. As in, hand me one.
Jul 7, 2009
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Not quite sure this is the right department to post this, but it does involve snails lol.

I'm thinking of changing my substrate.

BUT, I have mts and live black worms.

I do not want to lose these. I can not afford to replace them.
(and no my mts do not reproduce rapidly)

So how can I change the out the old substrate without losing my little critters?

Help!!!

Thank you.
 
I have no experience with black worms but the snails could be lured out of the substrate with food like lettuce and you can just scoop them up with a net.
 
When I had just a few MTS but needed to remove some sand from my tank, I sifted it through a sieve in the tank to collect them before scooping it out. Now that I have a gazillion of them, and am planning to completely replace the substrate, I expect to do the same ... but I bet it takes a lot longer this time. :hypnotized:
 
I have large gravel, regular gravel and sand, I'm a little worried trying to sift through a colander would crush the smaller snails (not to mention the worms).

How does the lettuce thing work?
 
LiveMermaid07 said:
I have large gravel, regular gravel and sand, I'm a little worried trying to sift through a colander would crush the smaller snails (not to mention the worms).

How does the lettuce thing work?
Click to expand...

Just stick a leaf of lettuce in the tank and they'll swarm it.
might work for the worms too if they like lettuce.
 
I can't get youtube on dial up, are there written instructions? (thanks for the link though :) )
 
Oh sorry, basically drink a 20 ounce coke, or a 20 ounce gatorade, cut the bottle into 2 pieces, the "cone" shaped part with the lid, and the tube shaped part where the coke usually is, invert the "cone" shaped part and put it into the tube so it looks like [__<| instead of [___|>

be sure the lid is unscrewed and off of the bottle too, then drop a piece of their favorite food into the bottle, and they'll crawl in through the inverted cone, and can't find their way back out due to the only hole out being in mid-air.

Hope that description works, lol.
 
AquarLiam said:
Oh sorry, basically drink a 20 ounce coke, or a 20 ounce gatorade, cut the bottle into 2 pieces, the "cone" shaped part with the lid, and the tube shaped part where the coke usually is, invert the "cone" shaped part and put it into the tube so it looks like [__<| instead of [___|>

be sure the lid is unscrewed and off of the bottle too, then drop a piece of their favorite food into the bottle, and they'll crawl in through the inverted cone, and can't find their way back out due to the only hole out being in mid-air.

Hope that description works, lol.
Click to expand...

Liam, that may just be the best description of a bottle-trap I've ever read... and it's complete with keyboard graphics! :werd:
 
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