Small Snail Ethics

[stoneage]

What are you complaining about, you finally got (not bought) a live creature from Wal-Mart that didn’t die. Seriously, you shouldn’t worry about the snails. If you don’t like them, get a fish that will eat them. Or, scoop them out of the gravel and give them away. I don’t think the population will ever outnumber the rocks in the gravel, but they do get on some peoples nerves. Personally, I love watching the little guys climbing over the plants and stuff. When my population starts to get to high, I just scoop some out and drop them in the 29gal with the black shark. He loves escargot.

I would try and get rid of them, I had a few snails in the beginning, within a couple of months the tank was overrun with them and it looked a complete mess. At one point I was hand picking 30 -50 snails a day out of the tank. Eventually I abandoned the whole tank in disgust.

 

[fishyaddict]

one of my ex-girlfriends told me she went to pet depot and found out that they would kill snails and feed them to the fish so she rescued 8 to put into her 10 gallon aquarium :duh:. Well those 8 reproduced at an astonishing rate to the point that she could not even see into her tank anymore. They pretty much choked out the tank and all her fish died. She eventually used had a snail to take care of the problem.

On a side note don't beat yourself up over buying plants from wal-mart and getting snail, i've bought plants from our local respectable LFS and even checked them for snails before putting them in, and there must of been eggs on them cause evenually i was seeing pin point snail babies all over, though my clown loaches made quick work of them.

 

[mooman]

#1 You can NEVER buy a live plant without getting snails no matter where you get them

#2 Snails only overrun a tank of you have too much algae, or you are not cleaning (gravel vacuming) enough, or are overfeeding.

#3 Stick your head in a pond and count the snails. They are everywhere, and there are TONS of them. They are a natural part of any aquatic ecosystem.

For those of you who have had to "give up" on tanks because of snails, I'm sorry if I offend you here, but if that is true, you were not maintaining your tank properly, or you were over feeding.

Dave
Another problem with snails is what constitutes "too many" snails differs from person to person. What is a normal population to me, might well be a plague to you. Trap them out with lettuce, clean your tank, feed less and you will be fine. DO NOT put poison in your tank. My planted 10g also has dozens of malysian pond snails (kind that looks like and ice cream cone). During the day, I can only spot a few, but at night they come out of the substrate and cover the tank. the tank has ZERO algae, the plants grow great. The snails keep the substrate clean and turned over, and everyone is happy. Good Luck, and God bless Pittsburgh.

 

[lucas68]

#3 Stick your head in a pond and count the snails. They are everywhere, and there are TONS of them. They are a natural part of any aquatic ecosystem.

Note, not recomended for ponds with piranha in it.

 

[S.A.]

Note, not recomended for ponds with piranha in it.

hahahah.... haha hahahah... seriosly i can't stop giggling. thanks, needed that. not enough (edit) coffee this morning and i have 150 students to stand in front of today. this image will get me through a long friday.

thank you thank you thank you.
hee hee hee :laugh:
(sorry a bit off topic) snicker.

 

[kkifer]

snail removal tool

When pond snails appeared in my 55 gal. planted tank, I decided to let them be, and can't say they did any harm. BUT, people kept commenting on them, instead of admiring my lovely fish and plants. Finally I decided to get rid of them. Soft green beans are a good "collector", but I got tired of moving my lights and lid to reach in and get baits and gather snails. So I invented a handy-dandy snail remover:

This is a piece of clear rigid tubing about 3/8 inch diameter and a little longer than the height of my tank. I put a finger tightly on the upper end, stick it down into the water just above a snail, and lift the finger. Water and snail swoosh up the tube. Replace finger, lift, place another finger at the bottom, drain water, deposit snail into his new home. (I'll dodge that aspect of the discussion.)

This takes just enough skill to be almost a sport, so it's kind of fun, and quick, and it is actually getting hard to find a snail now!

This tube is also useful for feeding my frogs... i can pour some pellets down it and deposit them right into "frog hollow" without the fish grabbing them all.

Hope this is useful to someone.

 

[Dragonmommy]

Personally I enjoy my snails but seems to have lost over half my snail population. Can someone direct me to this snail article and let me know if you have information to halp take care of my snails (I don't mean "take care of" in the mafia sense either)
I need snail help! My giant apple snail... or whatever is suddenly dormant and my mystery snails died...
Call me weird, but I love my snails. Maybe having a 4 year old who names them "Gary1" and "Gary2" has something to do with that.


ON a note of caution for those of you who "squish" your snails. I recently read an artcile about someone who did this and cut her/his finger on the shell resulting in a serious blood infect ect... Might wanna use something else if you MUST squish. Better yet, be humane and do something else with them. Here is the article, don't know if its true but I do know my cousin cut his foot in a lake once and it got terribly infected (quickly too) and the doctors believed it was caused by a snail as well (part of shell found in wound).
Snails, the Hidden Danger

 

[kkifer]

finger cuts

Wow, scary story about the finger infection. I'll admit I cut myself twice this same way before looking for a better method.

I also enjoyed the two apple snails I've had, but both died after a few months. They each started out very active and growing nice new shell, then slowed to dormancy and then death. The tank is very healthy. I'm not going to get another until I figure out what went wrong.

 

[daveedka]

Well those 8 reproduced at an astonishing rate to the point that she could not even see into her tank anymore. They pretty much choked out the tank and all her fish died. She eventually used had a snail to take care of the problem.

I'm sorry but I can neither believe this or picture it. If there was enough food and calcium both in the tank to create this scenario, then the snails were definately not the cause of the dead fish. If anything they helped prolong the fish's life span in some way or another. The amount of calcium it would take to grow a colony of snails that dense is not a trivial matter by any stretch. The amount of food that needs to be present to get snails to produce that well is not trivial either. So the idea you are describing could only be achieved with an extremely heavily fed and fouled tank, with high calcium additions. I have tried for quite a while to create massive quantities of snails. it is difficult to do in clean tanks. I don't keep dirty tanks as a rule, so I will admit I don't know what can be done in that regard, but I still doubt there would be enough calcium. Even in some of the nastiest tanks I have seen there is a limit to snail reproduction.

Another problem with snails is what constitutes "too many" snails differs from person to person.

This is an excellent point Mooman and one that shouldn't be forgotten. I like the snails, so seeing them constantly in my tanks doesn't bother me. others may not like the looks, regardless of any other merits or problems snails may create. All in all snails are good for a tank. But if the tank owner doesn't like the look of them it really kind of defeats the purpose of having the tank.

Personally I enjoy my snails but seems to have lost over half my snail population. Can someone direct me to this snail article and let me know if you have information to halp take care of my snails (I don't mean "take care of" in the mafia sense either)

IME if there is food then Calcium usually ends up being the problem. The only other caution is the use of anything copper based (coppersafe). Inverts and especially snails do not handle copper, and copper does not clean out of a tank easily.

The fact that you are only losing part of your population points towards either food or calcium. The snail article (Linked by sumthin fishy earlier) can be found in the articles forum here at AC.
Dave

 

[fishyaddict]

I'm sorry but I can neither believe this or picture it. If there was enough food and calcium both in the tank to create this scenario, then the snails were definately not the cause of the dead fish. If anything they helped prolong the fish's life span in some way or another. The amount of calcium it would take to grow a colony of snails that dense is not a trivial matter by any stretch. The amount of food that needs to be present to get snails to produce that well is not trivial either. So the idea you are describing could only be achieved with an extremely heavily fed and fouled tank, with high calcium additions. I have tried for quite a while to create massive quantities of snails. it is difficult to do in clean tanks. I don't keep dirty tanks as a rule, so I will admit I don't know what can be done in that regard, but I still doubt there would be enough calcium. Even in some of the nastiest tanks I have seen there is a limit to snail reproduction.

I can only tell you what she told me, i never saw the tank and don't know how frequently she did water changes. But i can tell you that i had a snail infestation in a 20 gallon from a plant i purchased in at the same pet store, and that i was pulling 50+ snails a week. Given that initially she was "saving" these snails i figure she probably didn't remove any for at least the first couple of months and seeing their ability to reproduce first hand i would say she probably had 300-400 snails in it by the time she decided to kill them. In a ten gallon tank that would leave very little room to see into the tank probably drawing her to the conclusion that they had "choked" them out. What the fish died from i have no clue other than what she reported.

ps when i dated her she was a terrible overfeeder, she probably still is, any fish that would beg she would feed, she didn't understand the overfeeding concept.