Too... Many... Ramshorns...

[Oddball~]

Wow, I love the prolificness of snails because I feed them to my pufferfish as a treat, but my puffs won't eat ramshorns, for some reason.

However, the problem is that I put ONE ramshorn in my 2.5 gallon snail-breeding tank, left it for like 2-3 weeks, then placed it into my 10 gallon tank. 2 weeks later, I see baby snails in my 10 gallon tank, even though there are shrimp and fish that should have eaten the eggs... In the 2.5 gallon tank, I do a 100% water change, which SHOULD have killed all the eggs, because I wanted to get rid of MTS eggs... But I see little ramshorns goin around in the tank!

I have like 20 of these guys and they are growing like nuts! 2 weeks and they're the size of a dime already!

Do LFS's normally take Ramshorns? Are these dudes beneficial? When I have too many, what should I do???? I'VE NEVER HAD A SNAIL PROBLEM... and I shouldn't, seeing as my puffers LOVE snails...

 

[Oddball~]

No opinions???

 

[RTR]

You are confusing me. MTS do not lay eggs, they are pathenogenic females, producing live young, so what would water changes have to do with them? Ramshorns and common ponds deposit egg masses, but they are in a gel, so water changes would not affect those either, unless the tank were left to dry out fully.

My LFS would not accept snails.

 

[Oddball~]

Oh... I thought doing that MTS laid eggs.... and that a 100% water change and squishing the plants around would kill all the eggs regardless... crud. >_<

But I'm still wondering if they are beneficial to my plants and stuffs... Darn, it seems my LFS won't take Ramshorns, either... Anyone up for some escaragot?

 

[congealedmeat]

I have exactly the same proble Oddball. I have a tonne of them in my tank. Good thing is that they all hang out on my main ornament, so I just whip that out and let it dry off and it wipes out quite a few. Kinda mean, but they are way too rampant. I also have 2 shrimp in my tank and they don't seem to eat the snails or the eggs.

I'm not 100% sure what my shrimp are though, they always have a white stripe straight down their back, but I've seen their main body color change from bright red to deep blue to transparent. They have both molted more than once and seem pretty healthy. If these guys live for awhile I'm going to get a bunch more. Shrimp are fun to watch and they are great for planted tanks, because they clean off all the small leaved plants like rotala and bacopa.