WTB MTS (Malaysian Trumpet Snails) shipped to Columbia, SC 29204

Status
Not open for further replies.
S

silentcircuit

AC Members
Mar 3, 2011
512
0
0
Columbia, SC
Real Name
Chris
Tired of having to gravel vac daily in my 29G and likely starving my plants of perfectly good fish... leavings... in the process. I hear MTS will bury all this stuff and make it useful / look less unpleasant. So I'd like that.

Need a few, however many you think would be good for a mildly overstocked 29G, shipped to 29204. Please PM me with what I'll be getting (pictures preferred) and a quote including shipping. Thanks!
 
Not trying to bung up anyone's sale here ... but you might need to reconsider your plan. MTS burrow through sand/gravel and crawl around in the open as they eat decaying roots, leaf matter, leftover food, algae, etc. I don't believe they consume fish excrement, if that's what you're referring to. Also, they certainly don't bury anything. In eating debris, they can create smaller particles that will sift down into the substrate, but that's about it. So, while MTS can be very useful for helping to keep sand from compacting, do eat some debris, and can help break up debris, they aren't going to solve a problem with large amounts of fish waste on top of the substrate. Also, MTS can reproduce very rapidly and can be highly visible. Just FYI. Hope this is helpful.
 
Agree 100% with what Deborah says. If you are by chance overfeeding your fish, you may end up with an excess of MTS. They are nocturnal so won't be very visible during the day at all, unless you overfeed. I consider them to be helpful for the most part (they can be a bit of a pest, the babies getting into your filter intake, powerhead, etc.) and I have some in all my tanks, but they will not fix or even help the problem you are describing, unfortunately. They will leave your plants alone, will stir your substrate a bit, and they are neat looking - all good reasons to keep them - but those are about the only reasons! **

I'll bet dollars to donuts that you have a pleco. For "cleanup" right"? Hah! I put my bristlenose pleco in my 55 gallon tank with a large piece of driftwood and boy, am I sorry I did. (He was in a 29 gallon tank with an undergravel before...the brown gravel hid the poos much better than this bright shiny white sand does)

There are "wood chips" on the white sand every day, which I get out once a week during water change day, but that's about all. A powerful canister filter on one side of the tank and a Koralia powerhead on the other side will go a long way towards helping with this, but it will still be there to some extent. Thankfully, in my case, it's mostly just wood that he's digesting, so has no effect on water quality...just unsightly.

Bottom line, if you have problems with visible poo on your tanks, more than likely you have a pleco (or possibly goldfish) and there is nothing that will remove it except for a filter or elbow grease!

** P.S. Ok, one more reason: people buy MTS on eBay for inflated prices, and they are the easiest thing to breed you can imagine. I sold 50 of them with a plant (Java moss and Java fern) for well over $10...twice! A quick and easy sale.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, I do have a pleco, and it's 99.99% his poop (brown, where everyone else's is yellow-orange-red from flakes). Unfortunately I love him, but yes he is a poo factory. I never intended him for "cleanup" I just like plecos.

I just saw someone mention MTS stir up sand and thought it might make the piles a bit less visible. I over-filter extensively (250GPH+ real world with media flow canister on a 29G, no restriction) but there are still a couple areas of slower flow / dead water in my tank (necessary to avoid blowing fish around). I also have a roughly 3" deep sand bed with fairly fine grain sand, and I'd rather not bother stirring it up to avoid gaseous pockets myself. If the snails will do that, all the better.
 
One thing you can try is sloping your substrate from left to right. It really does help, I do it on my smaller tanks. If you put your canister intake on the low side, most of the poop will end up on that low side.

I'm sorry about your troubles, plecos are such a pain in that way...but loveable, it's true :) It seems cruel to deprive them of wood, which they obviously love, but it does make for a mess! When these two bristlenose pass away of old age, I am never doing plecos again...of course, they will be around for another decade probably ;)
 
One day, I am going to write an article about plecos and their poop...it amazes me that LFS still sell these fish for cleaning! If only the unsuspecting customers knew...
 
As with all critters on the "clean-up crew," cleaning really just means converting one form of debris (or unwanted biological matter) into another form of debris. If we've lucky, it's reduced in size and not as unsightly. But not always, lol!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom