separating baby snails from poop?

[plah831]

this may sound silly, but i am having trouble removing poop in my snail breeding tank (feeders) without also removing the newborn snails. they are about the size of the tip of a mechanical pencil lead (just hatched this week) and therefore smaller than the poop strings of their parents. how do i clean the tank without getting rid of my hard-earned babies?

i am mostly concerned with feeding my dwarf puffers, so I need plenty of smallish snails (3 mm max) that they can crunch on. it's frustrating me that i can see the babies, but they're too small for me to pick up, much less strain them out of long strings of snail poop!

 

[Rdavis]

after a while it won't matter

I had the same problem when I was starting my feeder snail tank (5 gallon, with a beta) a year ago. But realized after the second and third round of snails started hatching, there were so many of them it didn't matter. I am lucky there is a stream just up the street from the house. I can collect a handful of good sized snails regularly, and they seem to start laying eggs the minute I toss them in the tank.

One thing I do before changing the water is to drop an algae wafer in the night before to attract as many snails to one spot in the tank. Then vac. around it. The other thing that really really helped was to get one of those really small tank siphons. I got mine from petsmart for like $4. I never knew they made them this size and just stumbled across it. It may be an inch in diameter. It is more accurate, and the suction and flow rate is a lot less so it helps to sort the wheat from the chaff so to speak.

 

[Dangerdoll]

you can use a smaller turkey baster.... works for me when cleaning a bare bottom fry tank.

 

[plah831]

thanks for both responses!
i do have the small gravel vac, about 1 inch in diameter, tube is probably 1/2 inch. i think it was still sucking up snails. I really like the feeding them first, idea, though! I honestly can't tell if the babies are eating, but they must be if they're still alive. I haven't seen them congregate around food the way the adults do.

the turkey baster idea is a good one, too. I may even use a 1 mL pipette that came with my test kit. I think I'll use it to squirt water at them, sending the poop strings floating and then suck those up.

Like RDavis said, there's so many of them that losing a few won't make a difference. It's just today I thought I really must have sucked out half of them. Oh, well, life goes on.

thanks again!