Pond Snails.....

[ikon]

I have pond snails in my tank . Where do they come from ?

I havent bought any new plants in a couple of months .

Can they be usefull ?? I dont wanna just throw em away .

 

[JDogg]

I have pond snails in my tank . Where do they come from ?

I havent bought any new plants in a couple of months .

Can they be usefull ?? I dont wanna just throw em away .

they probabaly can on your plants...if they were eggs it may have taken a couple months to hatch and grow to a size you would notice. are they useful? as long as they are not eating your plants then yes, they are an addition to your clean-up crew and do not add much to your bio-load.

if your are worried, IME loaches like to snack on them. or your can start a dwarf puffer tank and just pick them off here and there and feed them to your puffers.

 

[Zagz]

IMO pond snails are not something you want in your tank. They multiply by the 100's and do cause damage to plants. I'd start picking them out when you see them.

 

[Mosaic]

Disagree. They do eat dying plant matter, but if your plants are healthy, they'll be fine. There are some species that are herbivores, but they are far less common hitchhikers. They're good for cleaning up; if there's not much to clean up then their populations will stay small. Just don't overfeed and you'll be fine. If you want to get rid of them now is the best time to do it. Pick them out as you see them.

In the old days I went crazy trying to get rid of them, but then I realized they really did no damage at all and do serve an ecological function, so we made peace. I've grown a bit tenderhearted towards them since.

 

[SparKy697]

I have a large population in my tank. Yes they do multiply but I know I tend to over feed (working on that). I can offer no evidence that they eat live plant material. They do a good job of surrounding algae wafers that are intended for my cories though.

Most loaches and puffers make short work of them I'm told.

 

[Zagz]

I've had pond snails that ate my plants, healthy plants. As long as they are getting enough food from the tank itself, I'd imagine they will leave plants along, but for me at one point they had multiplied to enough snails in the tank to start eating my plants. To me they are pest snails.

 

[ikon]

I've had pond snails that ate my plants, healthy plants. As long as they are getting enough food from the tank itself, I'd imagine they will leave plants along, but for me at one point they had multiplied to enough snails in the tank to start eating my plants. To me they are pest snails.

thanxs for all the advice guys .. so far i havent seen em on the plants and its been going on for about a month or 2 ..... right now the MOST i see on the glass is 3-5 at any givin time ..... when i clean the rocks ill see about a dozen or so after i dump the old tank water out ... i dont care if they are in there .. just as long as it doesnt harm the fish or plants ..

i did buy a thing of stuff calle Had A Snail ....

if the tank becomes overrun with the snails can they dump a lot of waste which can maike the toxic levels rise ?

 

[Zagz]

Don't use the product had a snail. It has copper in it which will kill your plants if I remember correcty. Copper is also dangerous to inverts. If they become problematic, manual removal is the best. An algae pellet in a small glass jar, or a piece of lettuce weighed down of course, left overnight and the snails will gather on it. Pull it out and repeat as necessary.

 

[ikon]

Don't use the product had a snail. It has copper in it which will kill your plants if I remember correcty. Copper is also dangerous to inverts. If they become problematic, manual removal is the best. An algae pellet in a small glass jar, or a piece of lettuce weighed down of course, left overnight and the snails will gather on it. Pull it out and repeat as necessary.

ya i had someone else tell me about baiting the snails ....

a guy from petsmart said to drop a penny into the tank .....

 

[SparKy697]

a guy from petsmart said to drop a penny into the tank .....

I can't honestly imagine that dropping a penny in a tank would do anything other than increase the value of your tank by $.01.

Keep over feeding to a min. this will keep the snail numbers manageable. You can pick out the ones you see as well if they become to large in numbers. If you really want to get rid of them, and if you have the room, see if you can find one of the smaller versions of loach

 

[ikon]

a guy from petsmart said to drop a penny into the tank .....

I can't honestly imagine that dropping a penny in a tank would do anything other than increase the value of your tank by $.01.

Keep over feeding to a min. this will keep the snail numbers manageable. You can pick out the ones you see as well if they become to large in numbers. If you really want to get rid of them, and if you have the room, see if you can find one of the smaller versions of loach

well i dont mind a few of them in the tank .... but when it becomes a problem then ill do the food bait trick .......

 

[toddnbecka]

I can't honestly imagine that dropping a penny in a tank would do anything other than increase the value of your tank by $.01.

Actually, it will release copper ions into the water very slowly, poisoning any inverts over a period of time. Depending on the water chemistry, acidic water would work a little faster. Had-a-Snail is a copper sulfate solution, and works much faster. Not a good idea to use it if there are hundreds of snails, because the dead snails could quickly cause an ammonia spike.

 

[SparKy697]

Not a chemist here but it just seems to me being that a penny has such a small amount of copper in it these days, and the fact that we actually add trace amounts of copper to our tanks if we are dosing most mixtures of micro ferts for planted tanks, and the rate at which copper ions could be given up from a small mass like a penny.... I still don't see it as a viable method of removing snails.

 

[coldmachineUK]

It has copper in it which will kill your plants if I remember correcty.

Most plants are actually treated with copper sulphate washes before finding their way to the LFS, specifically to get rid of snails and egg clutches. The online retailer I use also treats his plants this way; all I have to do is make sure they're rinsed over before I put them in my community tank because I have shrimp in there.

Copper sulphate doesn't do anything to plants. It's inverts you've got to worry about, as you noted.

 

[SparKy697]

I do believe that too much copper is harmful to plants. But like most things in life, everything is good in the right amount.

 

[coldmachineUK]

Probably overdosing a tank with enough copper to damage plants would be the least of an aquarist's worries: it would almost certainly kill all the fish and everything else in there as well.

Copper is specifically a micronutrient which plants need (along with seven others such as iron and zinc etc.)...so I still fail to see how a copper treatment designed to kill snails (as an invert, top of the list of what's going to get it in the neck from the stuff) would damage aquarium plants.

I never go for chemical treatments personally: always opt for the more natural approach (lettuce leaf overnight, take it out with snails attached in the morning, and repeat with a new leaf every day). I'm just debating the point about copper affecting plants

 

[SparKy697]

I never go for chemical treatments personally: always opt for the more natural approach (lettuce leaf overnight, take it out with snails attached in the morning, and repeat with a new leaf every day). I'm just debating the point about copper affecting plants

I totally agree about the natural approach.

I just wanted to point out that copper would indeed cause harm to plants at some level.

 

[cabezon]

I had a snail problem, then I got a yoyo loach. now I have a snail only 1 gal to raise snails to feed the guy. I dropped an algae wafer in last night, now there are lines of snails going up and down the glass from the surface to the wafer.

 

[ikon]

I never go for chemical treatments personally: always opt for the more natural approach (lettuce leaf overnight, take it out with snails attached in the morning, and repeat with a new leaf every day). I'm just debating the point about copper affecting plants

I totally agree about the natural approach.

I just wanted to point out that copper would indeed cause harm to plants at some level.

ya i prefer to use chemicals as a do or die sitution .....

but ive been noticing snails are hanging out where the glass top sits on the ledge of the tank ......

 

[cabezon]

they like to hang at the water line.