Zezmo
Aquarium Advice Addict
My tank has been growing like crazy this month, but along with all this growth I am having some snail trouble (I think). I had picked up a Mystery snail, by all indicators from that great apple snail site, I had the plant friendly kind and from what I saw he was living off of dead leaves and debris. Then about mid month, my plants started getting little holes... like someone took a hole punch to the leaves. Now, I am pretty sure this is from snails. Cursing, I moved the Snail to my growout tank. I trimmed all the damaged leaves, and sure enough next day I had more holes. Now I have had Malaysian trumpet snails (Melanoides tuberculata) in there for a long time and have not seen any problems with them. I do not see any other snails, my loaches tend to eat any smaller soft shelled snails that get in there. For about a week I have been turning the light on in the middle of the night and picking out all the trumpets I can find, which is a total of 6 in a week. So the tank I most likely not "over run" with them. Assuming they were the culprit, I was doing a little research this morning to see if I can easily get rid of the trumpets. Well, every site I found says they are good to have in a planted tank, and they will not eat plants. Well, I suspect they are quite happy eating plants (at least the younger leaves on my swords). What is your experience with these guys? do they eat plants? should I hunt them down and get rid of them? (how?) or Maybe should I keep looking for the culprit who is making a slad bar of my tank.
