Snail Tank

[SparKy697]

I have a 10 gallon for snails. It has a good bed of eco and some plants. A piece of driftwood and some javafern. HOB filter and air stone. I dose excel for the plants and have about 40 w of light over it.

It's been a little more than a week since the last water change and I decided to do a complete battery of water tests. I was surprised to find a little bit of nitrite in this tank ~.5ppm. This tank has been cycled (fishless) and has had snails in it over 2 months.

pH 7.1 a little lower than my tap water.
KH <1 !!!
GH 5 Tap water is normally around 11

I would like to know if adding calcium carbonate is recommended? And if so, to what level?

I inadvertently purchased a salt water calcium test, how far off will the test results be if I use this on the FW?

This tank contains mostly 4 mystery snails 2 blue and 2 purple. I am in the process of setting up a new tank for them with a crushed coral substrate but I'm probably a couple of weeks away from having it completed.

Any suggestions?

 

[plecoperson]

You can dose baking soda at 1 teaspoon for 10 gallons. When I was breeding snails I did that (adding baking soda to the new water at water change time), dosed liquid calcium as well, and had a media bag of crushed coral in the HOB filter. OK, and a little coral sprinkled over the gravel.

I could have calmed all that down quite a lot if the tank wasn't so very FULL of snails!

 

[SparKy697]

Now those are some snails. I'm hoping my purple and blue snails do that well. There appears to be snail love'n going on all the time but no eggs as of yet. I'm hoping to have them all moved over to the tank with the coral substrate later this week.

What were you feeding those snails?
I found that I had bought a pound of calcium carbonate from gregwatson.com when I bought my ferts (I ordered practically one of everything) and was wondering if I could use it in this tank. It does not seem to dissolve though.

 

[plecoperson]

I feed snails fresh greens (collards, dandelion, turnip, romaine lettuce-dark, leafy stuff that I parboil), green beans, peas, algae tabs, "meatier" tabs once a week, very occasionally frozen bloodworm or brine, "snail cookies" that have calcium added and make a huge mess in the tank, and sometimes just flakes. I try to keep a variety and lots of vegetables w/a high calcium content.

Calcium carbonate will eventually dissolve (or at least become invisible) in my experience. I used human calcium tablets and chucked one in the filter. Forgot about that part....

If you do a big water change and lower the water level in the tank, so the snail has room to get out of the water completely, you might get some egg clutches-always worked for me! Yours might just not be quite ready to lay yet, though.

 

[SparKy697]

I do keep the water level down about 2 inches from the bottom of the rim. These are young snails although they have grown so much. I have had them for about a month. They are about the size of a half dollar at this point. I've been doing pretty much the same feeding routine except for the snail cookies.

I added some calcium carbonate, not much because I don't want to risk over doing it. We'll see how the water is in the morning.

 

[theotheragentm]

Holy shnikies, that's a lot of snails. I love it.