ryan said:nitrates hover between 20 and 40ppm. KH and PH are both higher due to the fact that the tank's substrate is about 1/3 crushed coral (left over from when it was an african Q' tank.).
I honestly dont mind the snails for the most part, i just dont want them harming the ramshorns or the crawdad, i can deal with the eye sore, and the massive detris disposal is kinda nice.
its just kind of hard to get rid of one kind of invertibrate without harming the others
p
With MTS's removal by hand is about your best option. their defenses as mentioned are quite good. On the flip side there are much worse things you could have in your tank. I would suggest removing all you can at night, and sending them to me. continue removal with or without shipping them to me, and eventually you'll get them out of there. I have one tank where I am trying to promote pond snail reproduction, and there were some MTS's that came in with the plants, it took me a couple of months to get them all out and into another tank, but I haven't had any in there for quite a while, so I think I got them all.
With crushed coral, there should be plenty of calcium in the tank I would think. You can also get a peice of cuttlebone and put it in the tank for them to graze on, this will probably help your ramshorns as well. I also feed hikari crab pellets which are high in calcium and reccomended for crays as well as crabs. All in all, MTS's reproduce quite slowly compared to most snails, so if you significantly reduce the numbers and reduce the available food in the tank, they should be fairly controllable. With messy eaters, it is hard to keep food levels down. I would suggest some extra vaccuming and water changes until your nitrates get down to the 5-10 range. Also another method that helps is to feed heavily before tank cleaning and then feed light or not at all for a few days each week, then do heavy feeding again right before water changes. the animals get plenty of food that way, but the vaccuming quickly takes care of any excess mess before it can be converted or settle deeply. If you want to send me the snails PM me and I'll get you my address. I can't get MTS's to reproduce fast enough in my cichlid tank and no other snails will last more than a few minutes.
dave
