Snail problems...

R

ryan

Finder, Filleter, and Fryer of Nemo
Aug 20, 2002
174
0
0
40
Fort Wayne, Indiana
I have a ten gallon tank which houses a blue crawdad, 2 ramshorn snails, a handful of ghost shrimp, java moss and, unfortunatly a MASSIVE population of smallish (less than an inch) cone shaped snails. they literally cover the glass at night. Anyways besides the eye sores i didnt give them much thought, but now they are stripping the calcium right off of the ramshorns. Im am worried that they are/ will start to do the same thing to my crawdad.

i already grow out yoyo loaches in the tank but they barely touch the snails. i've thought about dwarf puffers but i like the ghost shrimp, and with all the inverts copper treatment is out of the question. I've cut feeding to next to nothing and dosed calcium, but nothing seems to help.

any advice is welcome and appriciated

ryan
 
What is the nitrate level in the tank? The KH? The pH? Snails only multiply to meet the available food supply, so either waste or food from the cray (they are messy feeders), buildup in the substrate, or algae from the dissolved nutrients, somthing is feeding them.

Resorting to copper is admiting failure to maintain and control the tank, and asking for a tank crash from decaying snails. MTS however will not be killed off by copper, they have trap doors and will just close them and wait out the copper.
 
MTS are also livebearers, there are almost certainly many more than you have seen in there. During the day they burrow into the substrate, which also does have a benefit as they break up any anerobic zones and prevent them. They will eat other snails eggs so if your hoping for those ramshorns to reproduce your probably going to be dissapointed. The best thing you can do is just keep removing them as you see them.
 
How about salt. Salt will usually kill snails, then after (or if) they all die you can get rid of the salt with regular water changes. Take out the ramshorns before you add the salt. I dont know if the crawdad or the shrimp would be affected, but you could take them out too.
 
You would need a lot ofsalt to kill off the snails, probably a level similar to that needed for killing off freshwater fish. I use salt as a medication and my snails never seem to mind.
 
Ok - so salt won't work. To be honest, if it was my tank I think I would tear down the whole thing and start over. It's only 10 gal, so you could easily do the whole thing in a day. Put the livestock in the growout tank untill the 10 gal is ready. (But thats just me.)
 
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 :confused:

ryan

:edit: also, tearing down the tank is my last resort, i really dont want to have to recycle the thing, which would be inevitable since the snails live primarily in the gravel. No matter how well i strained it i'd still end up with enough snails to keep the population going. and i'd have to ditch the java moss (its like a snail apartment complex). Not like java moss is hard to replace, but its the first plant i've ever kept that didn't die as soon as i touched it.

:edit #2: what does MTS stand for? **** i feel like such a newb. Ask me about saltwater or SA/CA cichlids and i know some things i sware :p
 
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Malaysian Trumpet Snails.

It is quite a dilema, how to get rid of one snail without hurting the others. Well I suppose you could try the old spinach leaf trick. Place a piece of spinach, or any other suitable veggie near where the less favourable snails live the most and wait until they climb on board for a snack. At that point pick them out, removing any wanted snails and replacing them in the tank. It is slow but does seem to work.
 
MTS = Malaysian Trumpet Snail

A common trick people use to remove massive amounts of snails is to put some veggies in a jar, then simply remove the jar during the snails primary feeding. (For MTS I guess that could mean waking up at ~2:00am)

Unfortunately this is usually just a temporary way to significantly reduce numbers. Theres no way you can get all of them this way, and as long as the same food source is available, they will eventually reproduce back to similar numbers. Doing this every week would cut down on the eyesore, but it would be a 'workaround', not a 'solution'.

Yoyo loaches not doing anything huh? I cured my snail problem in my 30g tank with just one small clown loach. Slowly but surely, he single handily ate every single snail in my tank (which was A LOT) Of course, a loach that goes for the MTS's will also go for the ramshorns, and eventually the shrimp if it gets big enuff.
 
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